


My First Idol

by LambertStarr19



Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Betrayal, Dreams, Family, Love, M/M, friendships, relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-09 16:41:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 56,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1990131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LambertStarr19/pseuds/LambertStarr19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katie Lieberman recounts her experience with the first celebrity idol she's ever had in 32 years, American-Idol Season 8 Runner Up Adam Lambert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. First Meeting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fan fiction was inspired on a dream that my best friend on Twitter @glambertfan30 shared with me, and it was so intriguing I decided to write a story based on it. Here it is inspired by her and to all my fellow Glamberts with all my love. I hope y'all enjoy this. :)

Growing up, I wasn't much of a fan of anyone. I remember that I was too focused on school work and homework when I was a child and then a teenager, and when I turned eighteen, I went to college and pursued a career in nursing. When I was five, I met a special lady named Carmen Navarro who suffered from paraplegia. My mother was taking care of her because her entire family had turned their backs on her, so as her best friend that she was, my mother stepped in, but at the time, we were unaware that Carmen had other health conditions that were deadly, and Carmen died five years after moving in with us, but not before inspiring me to become a nurse and help as many people as I could.

Today, I was married for fourteen years and I had a teenage daughter, age fourteen, named Vanessa, and incredibly, Vanessa was the one who introduced me to a wonderful singer five years before that was performing week after week on Season Eight of the popular singing-competition reality show named American Idol. I had just arrived home that night at twenty minutes until nine because when I finished my shift at the hospital I had to run a few other errands. Vanessa welcomed me home that day by gushing about this singer named Adam Lambert, age twenty-seven, and season eight of American Idol had started two weeks before, but on that Thursday night, during that 'results show', my daughter came to me crying because she was praying that her favorite contestant, Adam Lambert, wouldn't lose. Vanessa was only nine years old then, so it touched my heart that a child of that age would become so preoccupied with a singer that she was watching perform on TV when in real life, she had much-more important things to worry about, like the few house chores that her father and I had assigned to her, her homework, and always having sufficient food and school supplies, basically to never run out of the things that children her age needed the very most. Therefore, I decided to do what I could to help Vanessa by the end of the broadcast of that night's American Idol episode. I confess that, that night I voted for this kid named Adam Lambert more than once, but the ends justify the means, so I don't feel guilty that I cheated in a sense. My efforts, and the efforts of our family members and friends paid off because by the week after, on that Thursday, Adam was safe in the competition, and he continued to be safe until he became runner up of season eight of this show. I also admit that not everyone in our circle was Adam's biggest fan, but we all joined forces and voted like crazy for one reason—our unconditional and boundless love for our Vanessa. Eventually, what had never happened to me in twenty-seven years at the time, it happened. I became the fan of a singer, a rock star, or whatever it is that people call talented people like Adam that specialize in music—whatever. My thoughts were kind of scattered right now. 

At first I really liked Adam and I enjoyed it when his songs were played on our local radio station at random. That progressed to me watching the VH1 Top Twenty Video Countdown every Saturday morning at nine, on my only weekly day off, just to see if the official video of Adam's latest single was on the countdown and if so, what position it had occupied. Then I bought a copy of Adam's debut album, For Your Entertainment, and then I bought each single as it was released because Adam was one of the artists whose songs were least played on the radio, so I no longer got to get that sense of joy when his song came on the radio. Therefore, in order to listen to my favorite Adam songs when I wanted to, I just had to buy the singles, the physical copies of them, because when it came to music, I had too little knowledge to be aware of the fact that there was such a thing as an mp3. I knew nothing about music downloads, legal or illegal. I was too busy working all day and all night, and Robert Alexander knew about it because he was a computer technician and he'd fixed too many computers whose hard drives had gotten damaged because of viruses and Trojan horses found on files that his customers had downloaded from the internet, but he didn't think that was an important subject to talk to me about. There was no need in his opinion, since he always made sure to have enough money for Vanessa to be able to download her favorite songs legally directly from iTunes. We weren't in trouble because of her downloading songs illegally, so Alex let me be 'old school' and buy all of my favorite music in CD format. He was amazed that I had finally become someone's fanatic, after twenty-seven incredible years of listening to music like most people did, but never having become too invested in any singer or rock star. However, all that Adam was to me in Alex's opinion was just that—entertainment. Today, five years later, Alex was discovering just how colossal my passion for Adam Lambert was. However, I didn't see him as a brother or as a good friend who just happened to be my age. I had a crush on him, but I was grounded enough on reality to know that this love for Adam was solely platonic. I must've been the luckiest fanatic in the world because the rock star I had a crush on happened to be gay, so there was no danger of me being unfaithful to Robert with this rock star, even in my thoughts or dreams. Yes, Adam was gorgeous in my eyes, but he hadn't become desirable to me, and I knew that by this age, he never would. I knew too well the difference between infatuation and true love to get caught up in this fantasy with this singer. I had never had what they would call a wet dream with Adam because life would always do something to remind me that this couldn't be more impossible because I was married and had a family and he was gay. Of all of the men and women in the world who would ever fall in love, Adam and I were the very-least likely to—thank God. However, my princess didn't feel the same. It wasn't like Vanessa was hoping to marry him one day. For Pete's sake, he was as old as her mother, and although she was attracted to men regardless of their age, men that were the same age as her parents weren't marriage material for her. However, she was hoping for her to steal a kiss from Adam one day several years from now and for him not to be offended afterwards. He didn't feel offended when the superstar Kesha kissed him, Vanessa realized...

We were stunned when Vanessa literally jumped on Adam backstage, her arms wrapped tight around him, too tight for him to just get her off of him gently like we'd heard he had to do with other over-the-top fans sometimes. Adam and Vanessa fell on the ground together because the force she exerted when she jumped on him without realizing what she was doing, it overpowered him and the inevitable happened: the fall that Adam feared might caused his back to break. But he couldn't stop laughing.  
I couldn't believe his reaction. I thought that he would be angry and demand security to kick us all out. A few of his fans had been crazy and over the top, but I didn't think any of them had caused him to drop to the ground like that after jumping on him.

He said to her, while they were both getting up, “Lovely lady, care to tell me your name?” still smiling, and baffling me even more. He'd found what just happened adorable. Few rock stars had the same reaction. Where was he from, a planet from another galaxy? He seemed to be.

She said, “My name is Vanessa Lieberman.”

He shook her hand. “It's great to meet you, Vanessa! I must say though, in these past five years I've had several fans jump on me like you just did, but none of them got away with it. They weren't banned from ever seeing me in concert or being backstage with me again, but security kicked them out.” When he said this, his facial expression changed completely into one that made it seem like he was talking about a fan dying during his concert instead. He had difficulty putting his thoughts together how he wanted because he'd been performing all day today, and he couldn't keep his eyes open, my poor angel. All he wanted to do was to go back to his hotel room to go to sleep. He'd just finished a brand-new performance of the first single from his third album on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Yes, it was that late. Moreover, it was one o'clock in the morning by the time we got to go in and see him. He was one of those rock stars that didn't leave the place until the very last fan to leave would get an autograph from him or a selfie with him.

I had stayed so far away from both of them because of my embarrassment that Adam noticed it and pointed it out. “Are you Vanessa's mother?” he said, showing that bright smile his fans couldn't help falling in love with. “She has your lips and your eyes.” But I interpreted that as him saying that although not identical to me, Vanessa resembled me enough for everyone to tell she was my daughter when they saw us together. He wasn't trying to enamor me. 

Robert showed no signs of getting jealous when he heard Adam's compliment. He was smiling, probably agreeing with Adam in his head and adding that my beautiful eyes were the first thing about me that attracted me to him and perhaps one of the reasons why we'd stayed married for fourteen years. After all, Robert didn't stop gushing about my eyes when he and I were alone. He said my eyes were so green and so bright that at times it seemed that they glowed in the dark. I just stood beside Robert again and took his hand in mine.

Adam walked over to us and shook our hands, first Robert's, and then mine. “It's so nice to meet you guys. I'm sorry you had to wait so long to see me. It's just that I make sure that I give a few minutes of my time to every one of my fans so that they don't feel they came to see me in vain. I'm flattered that anyone in this world would care enough about me to spend thousands of dollars on hotel fares, transportation, the concert tickets, and the VIP passes, just because I have a nice singing voice, and I say that because people around me say it, not to brag.”

Vanessa said, shaking, “It's not just about your beautiful, heavenly voice. It's also that you've been performing for so long that you really know how to put on a great show. You keep your audience beyond entertained. You keep them engaged.”

Adam held her hand. “That compliment means the world to me. Without my fans I'm nothing, so I try my best to give back. A few minutes of my attention in my opinion is nothing compared to what they do just to reach me. You'd think that for fans to buy your music, listen to it all the time, and watch live performances on TV would be more than enough, but I try to give back to those that 'go the extra mile', so to speak.”

Vanessa said, “Oh, my God, I was right about you every time I flailed about what an angel you were when I would see you in American Idol five years ago. Can I give you a hug?”

In the time he was replying, “Of course,” he was hugging her, and when she hugged him back, her tears dampened his shoulder.

When they let go, He said, “Thank you so much for coming.”

Vanessa said, “Do you think you'll recognize me if I send you tweets? I have a real picture of me as my twitter picture.”

Adam smiled. “I never forget faces, and I'll never forget you.”

I cleared my throat and replied, “Because you jumped on him and knocked him down.”

He didn't want to break her heart simply by saying 'yes', so he just smiled. A few minutes later, he said goodbye.

Robert and I ran after him when Robert knew that I'd finally gotten the courage to interact with him to ask him for an autograph. This is when I realized how strong and resonant Robert's voice really was, a voice that could move mountains, something I didn't get to see until today because despite our thousands of arguments these past thirteen years, he never yelled at me. His mother taught him not to ever yell at his wife or daughter because those two women were the most important women in his life besides her, and to this day, he kept that in mind. “Adam Lambert!” He'd also heard from other family members that addressing the person he wanted to get through to by first and last name was a much-more efficient manner to achieve this feat, making the person feel for a few seconds there that this was a reprimand and not a simple way of getting his or her attention. It had worked on Robert's family members every single time.

Adam turned in less than a second. “Yes?” he said, not allowing that incredible smile to fade.

I said, “I'm sorry to be taking more of your time.”

Adam said, “Don't apologize, please. Outside of home, my time is dedicated to my fans.”

Robert said, “Katie wants your autograph.”

I got my copy of the 'Better Than I Know Myself' single CD out of my purse along with a red-ink permanent marker. Since we'd purchased VIP passes, I had been more than prepared all this time to get Adam's autograph, but ironically, when the moment of truth came, I wasn't prepared to ask him for one. I had a knot in my throat and I just couldn't get the words out. I was too busy breathing normally. I handed the CD to Adam, and he opened it and signed it.

Adam asked, “Do you have a smartphone so we can take a selfie?”

Robert pulled his phone out of his pocket because my hands were paralyzed for me to pull mine out of the pocket of my pants. Adam took the phone in his hand, got the four of us together, and snapped a picture, holding me tighter than he would've normally. Then, he snapped another picture with Vanessa. A few minutes later, he and his crew left.


	2. Bittersweet Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After her first meeting with her and her mother's biggest idol, things start to get complicated for Vanessa Lieberman, Katie's daughter.

When we went to our hotel room, Vanessa didn't hesitate to use the WI-FI in the hotel room from her smartphone to log on to Twitter and share our pictures with Adam with her 200 followers. She'd had her twitter account for a year, but she didn't have that many followers because rather than being on Twitter all day, she was busy with her school work and homework just like I used to be. We handled our responsibility with our education for the same reason: because our dreams were too big for us to slack off and not to make school our priority. Vanessa dreamed of being the CEO of a big-name company one day, and getting the best grades in school and college, that was the way to make it happen, in my opinion, and Vanessa couldn't have agreed more, but when Vanessa had no homework, she would invest up to two hours a day on her entertainment: listening to music, surfing the internet, and talking on the phone and texting back and forth with her friends. She didn't mind helping her mom out with the house chores, either, and simple errands, like going to the grocery store every time we would run out of something we needed. The few things Vanessa asked for: new clothes and music, she worked hard to earn them. She didn't demand to have those things available to her. She was a good kid, and now it was her time to really enjoy this incredible experience. This was a summer my girl would never forget.

A few minutes later, Vanessa had gained 100 new followers just by tweeting out our pictures with Adam. Her interactions and mentions on Twitter had also gotten flooded with mentions, re-tweets, and her tweets getting marked as favorites. My girl didn't want a whole bunch of new followers. All that she wanted was to prove to the world that she wasn't wasting her time and energy being dedicated to her rock-star idol, to prove just how accessible and how sweet Adam was. She wanted him to get all the recognition instead of wanting it for herself. She wasn't the most popular kid in school because she was frowned upon for being a 'nerd', but she had two friends that she could count on through thick and thin: Lucy and Jessica. Those friends were more than enough for her, and they had created accounts on Twitter just to follow her. Their parents didn't allow them to have accounts on Facebook, though. They were a little overprotective because they'd heard too many reports on the news about teenagers falling victims to online predators, and not allowing them to have accounts on all social-networking sites was their way of lessening the chances of this happening to their daughters. Vanessa gasped when she got a brand-new tweet-reply from Lucy gushing about Adam Lambert, a singer she'd never cared much about. She didn't make Vanessa turn off his music when Vanessa played it around her, but she wasn't much of a fan. Now, Lucy was moved with how incredibly sweet Adam had been to us a few moments before. 

Lucy called Vanessa at her cell phone. Vanessa answered it at the first ring. Robert and I were sleeping, so she kept her voice lower than usual, and since she was only fourteen, she didn't dare to leave the room without our permission. When we booked this room we figured we might save money by just renting one room for a couple of nights, a room that had two beds in it instead of just one.   
Lucy said, “Now I justify your devotion to that singer. He's one of the most accessible singers ever. I noticed in the background that it was almost morning time and he was still hanging out with fans at that time?”

Vanessa said, “Yeah,” in an almost-inaudible voice. “He's the kind of rock star that doesn't leave the place before dedicating a few minutes of his time to every single fan backstage.”

Lucy said, “So what they were saying about him is true, huh?” 

I could hear everything because Vanessa had the phone on speakerphone. She must've been scared that I'd think that she was talking to a boy Glambert that she'd met backstage while waiting for Adam to see us. But I knew she was talking to Lucy. I wasn't as overprotective as she thought I was, but I was half-asleep, not awake enough to tell her that it was all right, and that she could turn the speakerphone off. I was kinda glad that she didn't because I was elated to find out Adam had just made another fan. 

Vanessa said, smiling, “Yes, it is, luckily for us.”

* * *

A few minutes later, I was still online, on Twitter, and I received a tweet from another fan that had been there. It said, You are delusional if you think Adam was impressed with you. He was pretending to be cool with what you did, but... She ran out of space so the next tweet said, You wouldn't believe all of the horrible things he was saying about you while laughing at you. Do a search on your twitter handle. The next tweet from the same person said, Everyone is talking about you. Of course Adam's not gonna tell you how he really feels. He's a hypocrite. The last tweet said, That's why I stopped being his fan, because he milks us for what we've got and then he...

I wrote her back before she could finish her thought. She must've been thinking about what to say next because I really gave her a piece of my mind and she didn't tweet anything for the next few minutes. My love for Adam is free, I tweeted. He doesn't have to love me back. No celebrity does. If he's talking smack about me and laughing at me, I ran out of space and composed another tweet, that'll be his problem to deal with when another fan catches him doing the same to them and exposes his hypocrisy, not mine.

* * *

The morning after, I didn't say anything to my mom. Mom and I were both avid and passionate fans of Adam Lambert, and I knew what would happen if I told her anything. She wouldn't just stop buying his records anymore. This was beyond that. She would give him the scolding of a lifetime on Twitter, causing uproar among Adam's twitter fans. One tweet usually wasn't enough to get a celebrity's attention in my experience, but filling that celebrities twitter page with mean tweets? Yeah, that would catch the attention of most celebrities, and when it did, within minutes, the person that started in on that celebrity would get their mentions and interactions invaded on Twitter and the pressure placed upon that person would be more than enough for that person to deactivate his or her account. Mom had created a twitter account in 2009 solely with the purpose of reading me, my cousins' and my best friends' tweets, so she didn't tweet that much. She was keeping up with Adam himself by following him of course, but to this day, she hadn't sent him even one tweet, and I would feel horrible if all of this had happened because of what one girl said, which by the way I didn't know if it was true or not because she'd made the allegations but provided no proof, but it was unbelievable how easy it was to 'plant the seed of doubt' in my mind. Perhaps it was just me. Perhaps people could get away with making me doubt someone I trusted really easily and it was just now that I was finding out the hard way.

When I checked my interactions again, another fan that had been there had claimed my interactions and mentions with her desperate tweets, debunking everything that the first fan had said. This time, there was at least proof that this particular fan had indeed been there because she had also posted her pictures with Adam all over twitter. Maybe the girl whose tweets I lost sleep over on this lovely morning, maybe she was bored and she decided to have her fun by tormenting me. People that do that are called trolls on the internet. They go to a place where the fans of a certain celebrity are gathered online and start posting mean messages against that celebrities just to, as we liked to call it, disturb the peace, but some trolls had too much fun doing this, and the girl that tweeted mean things to me about me and Adam was one of those people. I had to do what I hadn't done on Twitter since 2009 that I got my account—protecting my tweets, and changing my twitter handle. When my mom signed in to twitter and noticed my account was protected, she'd know immediately that something was wrong. She was following too little people to miss that little detail—twenty-five people to be exact, so when someone sent her a tweet directly, she didn't have to check her interactions in order to find it, much less when someone sent a tweet directly to me. I blocked the first girl to tweet me things about me and Adam just to keep my mom from reading her tweets on my time line. I couldn't have developed hatred for the girl. Maybe she was just a troll with the purpose of spoiling my happiness about my first face-to-face meeting with Adam. Maybe if I sent her any more tweets, as the day progressed, everything would get so out of control that I wouldn't be able to do anything to stop it other than deactivating my account and disappear from Twitter completely.

I sent this girl a few tweets telling her not to worry about what was going on because the other girl's tweets stung me until I realized that this girl had no provided proof of even being there and maybe she was just a troll that was bored and made it her pastime to bother other Glamberts, especially all of those that had just met Adam, sending us tweets that sounded almost cliché like 'You meant nothing to (him or her), and your idol won't remember you when he sees you again' kind of tweets.

But it was more serious than I imagined, this problem, because the same girl I'd talked to a few minutes before sent me tweets saying that Adam was trying to get in touch with me through my 'old' twitter handle and he couldn't reach me. It still hadn't dawned on me that I'd just been forced to change the twitter handle that I'd had for five whole years, ever since January 2009, that Adam was on American Idol and my parents gave me permission to sign up for a twitter account, but all that I was using it for at the time was to follow Adam. I wasn't tweeting anything then. I was too young and sensitive at the time to deal with people's responses on there. Oh, the dangers of social networking, my dad used to warn me every time that I signed in to Twitter then. I didn't un-protect my tweets, but I did send Adam a tweet saying this was me and explaining to him why I'd suddenly gotten off his radar precisely when he was getting so many mean tweets because of what he'd supposedly done to me. I had no idea things had gotten this bad because of the tweets that could've come from a bully, a troll, and not the tweets of a disgruntled former fan saying basically 'I told you so'. My head was scattered. I didn't know what to believe, but I inadvertently got a celebrity into trouble, my idol, of all celebrities, so I felt I had to give Adam a chance to at least explain himself. I assumed that, if what this bully was saying was true, he would confess it over the DM and cross his fingers hoping that I wouldn't take this matter any further. 

When Adam tweeted with the intention to appease me, what he did instead was to break my heart saying over the DM, Damn, I had no idea that this other girl, Summer, would develop such a big grudge against me that she'd decide to pick on you...and the next DM read, someone that had absolutely nothing to do with this. She forced a French-kiss on me and my guards had to force her away from me. The next DM read, I'm sorry that you got pulled into this, but I swear that her allegations are not true. I'd never make fun of my fans, but I could never allow a fan to disrespect me like that. One thing is getting a bit too carried away and a whole other ball game is to force a kiss on me. Don't worry, though. I set her straight and I hope that what I said will discourage her from messing with innocent Glamberts.

I thought he was finished so without replying to any of his tweets, I just signed out. I was so done with this, but he wasn't. He was just trying to save his good reputation with his fans that had been tarnished just for a few minutes there, but he did something I didn't think he would care enough to do—insisting on getting through to me. He sent me five more direct messages while I was offline, and when I signed back in, he was so personal with me and so sweet. He was talking to me like I was his little sister who'd just gotten angry with him over someone else's gossip about him. My hopes that he was a good person were restored in no time, and despite the hours that had passed, my mom still didn't know about any of the drama that I'd endured on Twitter today. In my opinion, it was better that way. After all, my mom wouldn't have known who he was talking to if she had found out and written tweets to the mean girl in my defense, if she was talking to another grown woman or to a teenager that was my age or even younger than me. But we later came to find out, by the time we went back home, that the girl that Adam had had that clash with that had then decided to start in on me for no reason, that she was a grown woman, almost my mother's age, thirty years old. In no time, all of Adam's followers on Twitter knew all about what had happened between her and Adam, because although Adam had decided not to press charges against her for her act of assault, he'd shamed her all over the internet by posting a video of the incident. Apparently, she'd kissed him for enough time for an aficionado to get to film it, and then Adam just egged that person on to post the video all over Twitter—and YouTube, too. In no time, this girl, Summer, had become one of the most hated fans of Adam Lambert. Why a female fan would force a kiss on her gay male idol was beyond anyone's understanding. I mean she knew he was gay and if she kissed him, she would have to force it on him. Duh. She wasn't a guy...and Adam wanted to teach this girl a lesson for taking her anger out on an innocent fan and pulling her into the whole mess.

Over the next few days, my friends and I couldn't stop talking about the whole experience—meeting Adam and being bullied by this girl, only for her to wind up in a worse place than any fan of anyone could ever imagine. But that wasn't it. Later on, when we dug deeper, just because we wanted to find the root of all of her hostility toward me, we found out that this girl wasn't really a fan of Adam Lambert's, but a homophobic woman starting in on him just for not being heterosexual. That explained her act of complete disrespect toward him. I didn't think that a true fan would never do something like that to his or her favorite celebrity, unless this fan had serious mental problems, like erotomania for example: that mental condition in which a fan believed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the celebrity he or she was madly in love with loved him or her back with the same passion and devotion, and that this fan and this celebrity had a relationship going on. The mental disorder had to be serious in order for someone to do that to somebody they'd just met, and the millions of people that saw the video worldwide, if they were sane, they could see clearly that this woman, Summer Webster, knew exactly what she was doing. This action had been planned to the most minute detail.


	3. Continuance Of Interaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's just not every day that one sees someone's idol keeping communication with his or her fan, but here, it happens.

Later on, Summer posted a manuscript-length blog entry expressing her anger over all the backlash she'd received. She was so angry that she revealed her true intentions in doing what she did to Adam, just what we'd come to find out during the research we'd been doing. I was accustomed to passing people by and for them not acknowledging my presence unless I happened to be walking by with pretty and popular girls beside me, so why this woman decided to target me at random was beyond me.

I was wrong about my mom, I found out that day. Just because she didn't say anything to anyone outside my circle, that didn't necessarily mean she was oblivious to what was happening. She wasn't. One thing I forgot about my mother, blindsided by what I was going through, was that when she unearthed someone's dark secret, she was quiet about it, and she took action behind the scenes. When my mom came into my room to talk to me today and explain to me how she'd found out about the whole thing and what she'd been doing that none of us knew about, I was shocked.

She said, “You're not gonna believe this, but Adam Lambert and I have been talking from the Twitter direct messages about this whole thing, and he provided me links to webpages about this woman that stole a kiss from him—yeah, this woman turned out to be much more vicious than anyone would've suspected her to be. I am afraid you've been messing with a total psycho and sociopath. You have an idea of what this woman is capable of, so I don't want you interacting with her or anyone who's linked directly to her, any further. If what it takes to protect yourself from her is to deactivate your social-networking accounts, then that's what I want you to do. These are the dangers I'd been warning you about, and when Adam Lambert got much more involved in this and took it much more seriously than any celebrity ever would, it's because the issue is getting worse and worse every day.”

“Oh, my God, Mom...”

Jess said, “Katie, I'm so sorry.” Mom was more like Jess' aunt because we'd known one another and been best friends since we were three years old, so Mom had no problem with her calling her Katie.

Mom said, “A lot has changed. This is a good thing that Adam and I have been exchanging messages because with every message I write to someone and he or she writes me back, I tend to become closer and closer to that person, but the circumstances...I mean this is just unheard of.”

I said, “If this psycho hadn't started in on me, the only interaction between you and Adam would've been the one you had after the concert that night.”

Mom said, “Yeah, but why didn't you tell me anything? What if this woman is so out of whack that she'd actually look us up online and show up at our door? Robert read her latest blog, and this woman seems like she's about to kill someone over everything that's happened.”  
I said, “I read her newest blog entry, too. I just didn't think it was that serious.”

Jessica asked, “May I say something?”

Mom said, “Sure.”

Jessica said, “We didn't tell our parents anything about this because we thought this was just a troll starting in on Vanessa and Adam. I understand you're frightened...” she got up, “because you are not used to what we call our second life. We have our real life, which means, our life with our families and friends when our computers and internet-enabled devices are completely off. Then, we have our second life, which although Vanessa and I don't get too deep into it because we're not doing much in social networking, we've done our research throughout the years, and we know about trolls—people that start in on a specific person or group of people that share the same interests, I. e., fans of a certain celebrity—just for fun, just to get a reaction out of us. Then that troll has fun with us for a little while and when he or she gets tired of bothering us, he or she either moves on to the next fan base or just stops doing what he or she's been doing and focuses on other more productive things. That's what this woman is, a troll, nothing more.”

I said, “I don't mean this, disrespectfully, Mom, but you're scared because you don't interact with people online at all, except for family members that are too far away from us. All that you do is to read what other people write online. You're what they call a lurker, so you're not used to this like we are. Granted we're not on social-networking-media all day and all night, but we've had our bad moments in the past with trolls. I started having silly arguments with trolls a year ago, but like I'm trying to explain to you, it's never gone beyond a few silly and baseless insults and a few completely-inaccurate statements about my life with the intention of hurting my feelings. Since I know that's bull-crap, I don't pay attention to it at all, and after a few messages back and forth, it usually stops. None of the trolls I've dealt with in the past have contacted me again.”

Mom said, “But if Adam got involved...”

I said, “...it's because it's serious this time, I know, but I don't think I'm gonna get hurt at all. She's not gonna have the chance to get closer to me unless I travel to her town, which I don't know where she lives, and happen to run into her. What are the chances of that happening?” I shrugged.

Mom said, “I understand your point of view about this, but I beg to differ, because...” Beads of sweat started forming in my forehead and in my face when she pulled out from behind her a file folder filled with printouts. She sat on my bed, opened it up, and as Jess and I sat right beside her, she showed us all of the material that she'd printed out straight from different sites of the internet, including all of the messages she and Adam had written to one another. In those messages, Adam was blaming himself for this getting out of hand because he instigated the aficionado that took the video to post it all over the internet, and he was apologizing to Mom and trying to convince her that he didn't intend it for me to get hurt, and that this was exactly what Summer wanted and he'd fallen into her trap, just like that. She wanted to get him in trouble, and he got too angry about what she was doing and he just went and made it all so much easier for her. My eyes welled with tears at the uncertainty of what was gonna happen now. I insisted in believing nothing was gonna happen to me, even in the long run because I wasn't the one that made the video viral of the incident between Adam and Summer, heck, I didn't even have footage of such material nor did I know it even existed, but what was gonna happen to him now? This was all a vendetta against him. But the fact he was gay couldn't be the only reason. Few homophobic people in the world would attack a celebrity relentlessly like this. They'd only attack the celebrity by writing mean and disparaging words to them or about them. No person that was still okay in the head would go to the lengths Summer had gone to. Now, Summer seemed to me like a vampire whose hunger was insatiable and who devoured every last shred of their victim and then licked the place where he killed his victim completely clean of the blood, even if the place was inundated with the victim's blood. This woman was about to destroy Adam's career, and since I was nothing more than a bystander that Summer took her rage out on, I couldn't do anything about it. I had to sit back and watch Adam work this out on his own or let his attorneys handle it. My innocent mind was hoping that Adam and Summer could just come to an agreement and cease fire. I always had faith in people recognizing when they were wrong and changing their ways. I knew nothing about Summer, just that she was lashing out.

 

* * *

 

Adam sent me a new direct message after the messages he'd sent me. He must've felt it was easier to contact me without having any problems because I was Vanessa's mother—the adult. Something that in my opinion, most people overlooked when contacting others, it meant the world to Adam. He wrote, I never pressed charges against this woman, so I believe I can succeed in reaching some kind of agreement with her. Another message said, Don't worry. I know this happened because of a reckless action I took, so I will do everything I can to make sure Vanessa's not harmed.

Even though I doubted he'd read my responses immediately, I replied, Vanessa and I are not worried about one another or about ourselves. We're worried about YOU. I hoped that would catch his attention enough for an immediate reply. He was investing his valuable time in talking to this adoring fan, so whatever I was to say to him, I'd better make it count. It wasn't as if I expected him and I to write back and forth on the twitter direct-messaging system for the rest of our lives, but this particular reply that I was expecting from him was a million times more important than any other message that he had sent me in the past or could send me in the future. I just needed to know if he was preoccupied of what would happen to him if he couldn't reach some kind of agreement with this crazy woman behind the scenes.

* * *

Months later – Summer of 2014

It was June 1st 2014 today. The last time that any of us in the Lieberman family had ever interacted with Adam Lambert was on April of 2014, and none of us expected any further interaction with him until the time that we decided to see him performing live again, which to be honest, that was in our plans in the far future. Right now we only had money to pay our mortgage and other bills and just to ensure our own commodity, to make sure we'd never run out of anything. The reason for this was that Robert just got laid off yesterday, and rather than sitting there and waiting to be called saying he could start working again, he decided to get another job, any old full-time job. It didn't necessarily have to be the wonderful job he had through which it was possible for us to afford commodities that most middle-class families couldn't. We didn't lose communication with the people we'd met online that weren't related to us because they stopped talking to us, but because we didn't have internet access in the house anymore. Jessica's mother, Miranda, she didn't mind allowing Vanessa to go over to her house and use the internet whenever she needed it to do any of her schoolwork, but I'd insisted in reminding Vanessa time and time again to use the internet-access in the Aguilera household solely for schoolwork and homework—no social networking of any kind because before we canceled the internet for being unable to afford it, I'd downloaded the file that contained every tweet that Vanessa ever made from her Twitter account and discovered everything that Summer had told her, and Robert and I decided that Vanessa was too young to be interacting with total strangers online. It just had ramifications too horrifying for us to be able to deal with. Vanessa didn't agree with our stance, but after running into summer the psycho, she understood that the best way to protect herself from people like Summer was to avoid having access to social networking—in our household, per her words to her father and me when we broke it to her that we'd have no access to the internet from our household for time indefinite. Robert and I hoped and prayed she wouldn't betray Miranda and Fernando's trust by using the internet in their house to do something that Robert and I didn't approve us. Miranda and Fernando had proven to be just as overprotective as we unashamedly admitted to others that we were. We weren't Puritans exactly. The purpose of our overprotection was to keep our only daughter from getting hurt, not to hold her down and keep her from doing things that most teenagers were doing in this 2014. If only her skin were a little thicker, perhaps she could pull off talking to strangers online, but her reaction to Summer's hateful tweets the morning after we met Adam in person for the very first time showed me otherwise, although her words contradicted her body language—the sheer fear she felt. She'd encountered bullies online, I could see in her, but never anyone quite like this woman, Summer. Summer was just a whole new breed of bully.

Today, Jessica came over to our house to study with Vanessa for their final exams. When they were finished studying tonight around one o'clock in the morning, eight hours after Jessica arrived, Jessica took a few extra minutes of her time before being picked up and taken back home, to show Vanessa screenshots of messages that Adam had left to my Twitter account. This is when I knew that Jessica was a forced to be reckoned with. She had a talent for hacking or stealing passwords. We'd always known her for being a computer geek completely obsessed with anything related to computers, but before today, we'd never known that she had a talent for bypassing anybody's anything, and I hoped that she wouldn't take this to the next level in the far future and end up imprisoned for it. 

I gasped when the girls showed me Adam's messages. Over the past two months, he'd send me a message once a week, every time he had thirty seconds of free time. He explained to me in different direct messages that Summer's resentment was something that he couldn't overpower no matter what he would do, and as a result, Summer wound up in prison for making threats against him and following through with those threats. She'd had the nerve to show up at his concert and actually thrown a knife at him while he was performing at a random gig he'd had while he was shooting new episodes of Glee, and when that night failed to hit him, scaring the hell out of everyone in the audience and everyone on stage, Summer got arrested that night and she was locked up right now after evidence surfaced that she'd made these threats. Police had seized every device Summer had ever used to access the internet and log into Twitter and Facebook to make horrible threats against Adam Lambert and his fans. Adam said in those messages that this wasn't the conclusion to this story that he wanted, but at least we were all safe, both he and everyone in the Lieberman family, as well as all of his Glamberts, and that he hoped that eventually Summer would have a change of heart in prison and turn her life around when she'd be reintegrated into society.

Jessica said, “I didn't use any programs to hack into your Twitter, Katie, just in case you were wondering. It wasn't easy getting in the first time I succeeded in doing so, I admit. I spent over ten hours that day—I'm not exaggerating—guessing your password, and when I guessed the first part of it, I spent a few more minutes guessing other components that might create the accurate combination of characters you could've used to create the password, and I got it, finally. When I got in, I started making screenshots of all the messages Adam was sending to you. It's the first time I've ever gone out of my way like this, gone out of my way meaning that I cracked my skull and scrambled my brain for so many hours, I did this because I felt that the information you were receiving in your DM's was important. I noticed that this whole thing between Summer and Adam was making it much harder for you to sleep at night, so I—oh, and don't go worrying about me. I don't plan on doing anything like this again unless I am threatened and hacking is the only way I can defend myself and protect myself from the idiot threatening me, all right? But I will become better at it enough to keep from getting caught.”

I didn't like hearing that, but I didn't let her know because I didn't want to start an argument with a girl that wasn't my daughter even though I saw her as such. I loved her and cared about her a lot, but I kept in mind that at the end of the day, I had no authority over her whatsoever, and I didn't plan on exerting authority over a child that I had no legal rights to, so I just didn't say anything and I instead poured myself a cup of coffee while she was talking to us. I knew caffeine kept me up for at least five hours when I had a serving of it at nighttime, but what Jessica had just said to me would keep me up all night anyway. I said, “When you go back home, would you please tell Miranda that you, she and Fernando are invited to dinner tonight?”

“That's so sweet. We hadn't been here for dinner in months. Dad will appreciate it because today happens to be his only day off. Dad will see if he can talk Grandpa into giving Robert a job at his company. We felt so bad when we heard Robert got laid off.”

“I don't know if I'm doing the right thing by deciding to keep this from Rob,” I said.

“It's best not to get his hopes up, in my opinion,” Jess said. “It's best to wait until Grandpa calls him over for an interview.”

I said, “Thank you for doing this for us.” I shook her hand. 

Jessica said, “I do this in the name of the friendship we've all had over the years. I think there's no greater proof of our love and solidarity to you guys. It's the least I can do after years back, it was Robert giving Dad loans every time Dad needed one, without even asking what Dad needed the money for.”

I said, “Fernando always paid the money back, so I don't think we needed to ask what the money was for. Robert and Fernando go too far back for it to have been any other way between them. Miranda and I met through them!”

A few minutes later, Miranda arrived to pick up Jessica and I took this chance to go outside and tell her that she and Fernando were invited to dinner tonight. Miranda and I talked for a few minutes and then Miranda took Jessica back home with her.

 

* * *


	4. Jessica

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katie starts worrying too much about Jessica, but are her fears unfounded?

I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning. Robert woke up in the middle of the night to see what was wrong. It was now four o'clock in the morning. I wasn't talking in my sleep about the sweet dreams I was having this time, so when I tossed, moved, and thrashed around the bed, unlike when I did this other times, it bothered Robert enough for him to wake up and call to my attention. He put his hand around my arm and shook me a little bit. “Katie?”

I woke up. “Oh, my God, I'm sorry! What did I do to disturb you?”

He replied, “Crying in your sleep. I wanna know what's wrong. You usually rather talk and laugh in your sleep so it doesn't bother me, but now, you're crying in your sleep without talking about why that is.”

“Oh, I didn't realize it.”

“Neither do you when you talk in your sleep. What's wrong? What's this about? Is there anything I can do to make this better?”

“I'm afraid not,” I said, sitting up, “because this is about Jessica. There is a comment she made when Vanessa and I were up and you were asleep, and she was just leaving—that I really want to tell Miranda about, but I'm afraid of Miranda's reaction.”

Robert sat up and wrapped his arms around me. “Did Jessica do something wrong?”

“Not exactly, but she hinted that she is capable of doing something very wrong later in her life.”

“Haven't we known Miranda and Fernando for sixteen years, though? Doesn't it always work out for everybody when you and Miranda clash over a certain person or situation?”

“Yes, but...”

“What I'm trying to say is that it might not be that bad. Tell me what happened.”

I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles. I decided against telling him that Jessica hacked into my twitter account by spending several hours of her valuable time guessing my password. I thought this might terrify him as well, so I just said, “She hinted that she has no problem in hacking someone's computer if that person represents a grave threat to her.”

Robert laughed, but his tone was chipper and fun instead of a reproaching tone or a mocking one. “Why are you losing sleep over that? Most people that interact with others on the internet would do the same thing! I'd do the same thing if some idiot on the internet represented a real threat to me. I am a computer technician, and when the customer's problem needs me to be a hacker, I have no hesitation in becoming one for my customer! I don't understand how, knowing Miranda as well as you do, she'll scold you and stop talking to you forever if you told her that Jessica said she'd hack into someone's...Katie, you're overreacting a wee bit here—just a wee bit. I know Miranda well enough to know that she's not gonna...”

“I'd agree with you if her daughter weren't the person we're talking about.”

“Oh, now I see where you're coming from. What you're afraid of is not that Miranda will put an end to her friendship with you for good, but that she'll punish Jessica for doing things on the computer that Miranda and Fernando don't approve of, and that Jessica will take reprisal against Vanessa.”

I sighed. “Exactly!”

He kissed my hair and hugged me even tighter. “This is easy! You don't have to lose sleep over this. Just don't tell Miranda anything, and that way, you'll prevent her from disconnecting her daughter from the web, too. In her case, it would be justified because none of us would want Jess to go to jail for hacking—a governmental entity, all right. And I say that because I know deep down you're afraid that Jessica's will take it one step further until she gets that far, if she continues hacking.”

“She assured me that she wouldn't, but then again, we don't know what's gonna happen even five minutes from now.”

He got up off the bed. “I know what's gonna happen here five minutes from now. I'm gonna bring you a mug filled with warm milk and honey, I'm gonna give it to you, and I'd like you to try to go back to sleep, OK? You need your rest. Don't forget you're working the mid-morning shift today.” He put on a t-shirt to go with his pajama pants to walk out of the room and go make me the warm milk. He didn't feel comfortable walking around the house topless or bottomless.

I thought, Oh, shit, I'm gonna need a lot of Red Bull today, rubbing my eyes with the knuckles of both of my hands again.

 

* * *

 

The next day, I needed clothes pins to help keep my eyes open. I went through four twenty-ounce cans of Red Bull in one day, and I was starting to get too hyperactive for anyone around me to miss it. While working with each patient, I was talking much more than usual and instead of walking the halls when a patient called out for help, I was running. What it was impossible for even me to notice was that my heart was beating faster than it was supposed to as well. On my way to the room of the next patient, I dropped to the ground. It took less than a second for everyone around me to come to my aid when my patient screamed out for help—for me. I could hear people screaming at me to wake up and crying from a distance. I could tell everyone was afraid that I might've died instead of just fainted. It wasn't rocket science what usually happened to someone who'd just had too many cans of Red Bull in one day.

That day, I went from nurse to patient. I underwent every medical test under the sun. 

Dr. Bridges came into my patient room to see me. He said, “How are you feeling, Katie?” with a smile on his face.

I assumed that smile meant that he either had good news for me, or that he had bad news and he didn't want to take my spirits all the way to the ground. “OK, I guess.”

He said, “And you are okay, I am fortunate to report.” Not only was that smile consistent, but I also found it beautiful. It was the same smile of someone that I knew and loved. He looked nothing like my idol, Adam Lambert, except for the hair color and the smile, but those details in his appearance were more than enough for me to have a random thought of Adam. “You can say you dodged a bullet. They say about ten cans of Red Bull in one day would take someone to where you almost went, but I'm afraid that your system needed a lot less than that to make you comatose. You almost died, Katie. It's because of you that I now believe in miracles. None of the patients have worked with had escaped death after having too many energy drinks. They've escaped death under other circumstances, but never this one.”

“I know. You're advising me to stay away from energy drinks, right?”

“If you really need an energy drink just to help you get through the day, have one per day, not four.”

“Got it. Have my husband and daughter come over to visit me? I don't know if I've been in a coma or sleeping.”

“You've been sleeping, and yes, nurses tell me that your husband, your parents, and your daughter have been here visiting you every day you've been here.”

“Every day I've been here?” I said, hearing my own emphasis out of astonishment at this statement. “How long have I been here?”

“Three days. In fact, your family and friends are out in the waiting room, waiting to come to see you.”

“Are they allowed to come in all at once?”

“Now that you're out of the woods, why not? I'm going to go tell them to come in, but it's going to be a little crowded because everyone bought a little something for you. You're getting discharged the day after tomorrow if we're satisfied with your test results.”

He was leaving, but I interrupted him saying, “Doctor...”

He turned and said, “Yes?”

“Is it me, or do you really have Adam Lambert's same smile?”

“This is gonna sound cliché, but I get that a lot,” he said, smiling again. “But I sense you were afraid that your adoration for Lambert would be causing you to hallucinate. In any case, fortunately you're not. To be honest, a patient pointed that out to me at my office five years ago, and it was that random comment that drove me to do research about Adam Lambert online. I don't have much time to watch TV, so I don't watch TV much. I watch two or three TV shows per week, but that's because they're my favorite shows that I'd been watching for years. I'm still disappointed Lambert didn't win American Idol, but then again, throughout these five years, he's gotten much, much farther than the winner by title has. I'm not a—what are his fans called—a Glambert, but I do acknowledge incredible talent when I get to spot it.” He walked out of the room and shut the door behind him.

 

A few minutes later, my family and friends crowded my room. Hugs and kisses abounded, and to my surprise, so did the presents. Although each visitor only brought one present, such get-well-soon presents were larger than life, not because of how pricey they were, but because of how sweet they were. Vanessa had spent a fraction of the money she'd saved up from the past allowances she'd been given in the past four years on a box of my favorite chocolates in the entire world. Robert had gathered from our savings to get me a bouquet of red roses, my favorite, the first flowers he ever brought to me the first time he realized that he wanted to be more than friends with me when we were thirteen years old. We knew we were too young to be intimate, but even though we weren't intimate until we were fifteen, that didn't keep us from giving in to our feelings and building what we considered a true and meaningful romantic relationship. Our parents didn't mistreat us when I got pregnant with Vanessa because we'd been boyfriend and girlfriend since Robert brought me that first bouquet of flowers, but our friends were giving us condoms the whole time we were sexually active together before I got pregnant with Vanessa, and when I did, we were also having safer sex. To me, that meant that Vanessa would've been born no matter what, but despite the difficulty we faced in raising her, Robert and I considered her a blessing rather than an impediment for us to live our lives. Both Robert's parents and my parents helped in taking care of her while we both worked two full-time jobs daily to support our daughter.

Robert told me something that the doctor didn't feel it was his place for him to tell me. “Honey,” he said, with a smile on his face brighter than I'd ever seen,” and held my hand, “guess what? The doctor told me that you're pregnant.”

I gasped and placed my hand on my chest, feeling my heart pounding again all of a sudden.

Robert couldn't stop shedding tears of pure joy. “We're expecting our second child, Katie, our second child in a little over a decade!”

Mom said, “And all this time you thought you couldn't have children after Vanessa.”

I asked, “I was diagnosed with a disorder that impedes me from getting pregnant, remember? My OB-GYN had proven to be absolutely right, to my dismay, all these years. I didn't want a house full of children. All this time, all I wanted was one more child. Just one more.”

Vanessa said, chipper, “I want it to be a boy! I'd always wanted a baby brother!”

Jessica said, her tone more serious, “Are you sure?” crossing her arms across her chest. “Chelsea's three-year-old brother dedicates his life to make hers a complete living hell.”

Vanessa said, not allowing her joy to be detained, “Everybody is different.”

Jessica said, with preoccupation in her voice, “If you say so. What I'm trying to say is that boys that are nice to their sisters are needles in a haystack.”

Mom laughed. “You've heard it from Chelsea, but you have no idea. Growing up, Katie's uncle and I never got along!”

I said, “Yeah, that explains why Vanessa's never met her granduncle. It all went from him doing mean things to Mom growing up that most brothers do to their sisters, just because they enjoy watching their sisters losing their cool, to stealing from Mom and just...it's a long story. To be honest, I don't want to see him again, either. He ruined every chance he'd had of mending his familial relationship with Mom when he beat me up because of an argument they'd had that was between the two of them. He raised his hand at Mom and when I got in between them to stop him I was the one that received all the blows. This happened fifteen years ago.”

Vanessa said, “I don't want to meet him because Mom almost miscarried me because of him.”

Jessica said, “Wow,” her face marred by the horror, “I never knew until now, but I understand why it's so difficult for you guys to talk about this with anyone.”

Miranda said, “I always knew. It was my house that Katie ran away to when this happened because she felt that Kathryn was too powerless to defend Katie from her own uncle. Kathryn was also beaten down, by the way. Corey is an asshole. He hasn't gotten married to this day because all of the women he starts relationships with leave him for being controlling and abusive.”

Jessica said, “I'm gonna have nightmares tonight. Thanks, guys.”

Fernando laughed. 

I didn't know what was so funny. I wouldn't have laughed if Vanessa had made that comment, but once again, who was I to show my objection? I'd never faced even a minor act from disrespect from my husband, so who was I to criticize Miranda's? When Robert and I argued, we argued about the same thing for hours, but we never raised our voices and when we were finished arguing, we'd realize it was stupid and we'd wind up making up like nothing had ever happened. Vanessa had been disrespectful to me many times, though, especially from ages ten to twelve, but when she realized that she was wrong, she was so quick to turn her life around that Robert and I thought we were dreaming when we noticed it. She'd been hanging out with the wrong crowd then, and proven to be a little more impressionable than most kids. We still had our daughter though, unlike some parents that faced the same trouble with their children, so Robert and I were sure that the storm had passed. Vanessa knew that she was free to do as she pleased when it was time to move out of home and go to college anyway, and I could tell she was anxious for those four years to pass. She was already talking about reuniting money to see Adam Lambert in concert again by that time, though, but considering how well she was behaving, I didn't think she'd have to wait that long. Robert and I agreed that if we got back on track again soon, we would all make another trip to see Adam Lambert live either by mid next year or early 2016. 

To lighten the air in the atmosphere, I said, “Hey, Miranda, Fernando, why don't I invite you to that dinner that never took place for the day after tomorrow when I get discharged, huh?”

Fernando said, “That sounds like a plan. I've been looking forward to it, but it'd have to be a late, late-night dinner because of my job, you know? I work so late that sometimes Miranda thinks I'm rather out cheating.” He laughed again. To my interpretation, he liked to really get in Miranda and Jessica's nerves and he loved their adverse reactions to his random comments that they agreed with me were distasteful.

Miranda turned around and walked out of the room.

He went after her. “Baby, wait,” and closed the door behind him. I heard him say, “You know me, baby, and my uncalled for jokes,” from far away. “Please, baby...”

Miranda slapped him in the face so hard that we all heard it, and silence invaded the room then.  
When Jessica got over her shocked, she said, “Ooh, this is the first time this happens!”

Miranda screamed, “How dare you to ruin such a beautiful occasion.”

They got back into the room to avoid a reprimand from a doctor or a nurse. Miranda was acting like nothing ever happened, but Fernando couldn't stop caressing his own marked and reddened cheek—and laughing, to my shock. I knew Robert well enough to know that if I had done something like this to him, after he'd been sweeter to me than many men were to their wives, for all this time, he would've moved away from home—for the next several months. Or years. Then he said, “I brought that upon myself. What I said was out of line, so I don't even, you know? I can tell when someone's action against me is undeserved and when it isn't. I had never made one of my horrible jokes during such a delicate occasion, so I apologize—to all of you,” he said, retaining that grin of a mischievous five-year-old, “from the bottom of my heart.”

Miranda said, “I know I overreacted,” wiping her tears away, irritating her reddened eyes even more. “It's just that I was sure I'd lose my best friend, and when he went and made this joke at the very-wrong time, I just...he knows how insecure I can be sometimes.”

Jessica said, her arm around her mother, “My dad's jokes about cheating are the ones that hurt my mom to the core. My mom frowns when he makes rude jokes, but these cheating jokes are the ones that she just can't stand, and Dad knows that.”

Fernando said, “And I'm to blame for her doubt toward me because you don't know this, Robert, Vanessa, and Katie, but I cheated on her five years ago.”

I just said, “Oh.” After about two straight minutes of silence, I said, “Well, I hope this gets better eventually. I can't imagine how I'll feel if I ever found out that Robert's cheated on me in the past.”

Robert said, holding my hand, “You'll never find out because I'll never do it. Mama always said that the only surefire way of keeping someone else to find out about something bad you did is to not do it at all, because secrets always find a way of coming out, and the longer they take to come out, the more disastrous the outcome is.”

Mom said, “I taught my daughters the same thing. It's too bad that only Katie listened.”

* * *


	5. Tragedy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A single reckless act on Katie's part against herself threatens her life. Will she survive?

Robert had just found out that I had a sister but that I didn't have one anymore, and he was crying when everybody left us alone in the room to go to get me my netbook computer. 

I liked writing journals. Between illicit drugs, gambling, compulsive shopping, or drinking myself to a stupor every day, it seemed like a better alternative to cope with my demons of past painful experiences that were still haunting me to this day. My sister, Melanie was ten years older than me, and Robert and I met two years after she died from a drug overdose. I chose to keep that painful chapter of my life from him, but I just found out the hard way that this was the worst thing I could've done, because Robert loved me much more than I thought during these over fifteen years. My pain was his pain, and it was just now that I was noticing that. How could I have noticed it before if he'd been out working all day and all night until recently, and I'd kept my most-painful experiences from him? Despite the fact that according to our parents, my sister wasn't walking in the right path, my sister and I were really close. She was my crying shoulder when I'd come to her complaining about being bullied in school, or about having a crush on the cute boy that didn't like me back no matter what I'd do to impress him. I never knew my sister was doing drugs because she managed to keep that dark secret of hers from all of us. When we spent time together and talked, her eyes were kinda red, and since my parents didn't know she was doing drugs, either, because she'd moved out of the house at age eighteen and they just didn't meddle, they couldn't explain to me why Melanie's eyes were always red. There's one thing I could admire her for, though—always making sure to not do drugs in front of me, to avoid it for me to follow in her footsteps. Mel was more than my older sister. She was my idol. I'd never had a rock star idol, but I did have an idol, the greatest one of all, and that was Mel. I thought about her every day. I missed her every day. Especially right now that if she were alive, her forty-second birthday would be today.

Robert said, “Damn, I'm so sorry, Katie. Now I know why Kathryn brought your sister up at random. She was born today, forty-two years ago, and she's not here. It would've been great if I had gotten to meet her. I never had a sister, and from how you just described her to me, she sounds like one of those rare dream siblings. I'm estranged from my brother, too, but not because he's dead, but because he's destitute. My older brother killed another man three years ago, and he's in prison.”

“Remembering our siblings at random, aren't we?” I said, looking down, my eyes welled with tears. “Now I understand why you'd always talk me out of visiting Brady in prison.”

“I've kept informed about Brady, and I was hoping he would change his ways in due time, but he hasn't, and to be honest, I don't think he ever will. He killed that man so that he could be free to be with that man's wife. He falls in love with other men's wives or girlfriends. Every partner he's ever had was someone else's girlfriend or wife. That's why I don't want you visiting him in prison, because I am afraid he'll become obsessed with you, too. I don't see you as someone who would get romantically involved with his or her partner's family member.”

I said, “Of course not! If I've never set my eyes on any other man since I fell in love with you, I'd much less hook up with your brother! That's disgusting! In my opinion, my partner's family member, no matter how distant, is my family, too! That's what my parents instilled in me, and I'm not changing how I feel about this after thirty-two years!”

“I always knew that when Will told me that he introduced you to his brother and that you said you weren't interested.”

“Will and I never went all the way, but we did kiss once, and in my mind there is no difference between a kiss and all out sex. I was taught, also, that a kiss leads to sex most times, and in my family, that's been proven correct time and time again. We don't believe what we believe because other people taught it to us. We learned it from personal experience.”

“Most of my beliefs have been taught to me growing up, but I'm starting to question a few of them.”

“Like what?”

“Like my views on homosexuality, and this change of heart about this subject is brought on by a personal experience that I had with an LGBT person today. I've been thinking about it and I decided that it's unfair to look down upon LGBT people. The CEO of a prestigious company offered me a job opportunity today. She was very-well dressed, of course, and then she was wearing this ID of CEO of Innova Computers. She's in her mid-sixties and this is a company that she'd been building since she graduated from college at age twenty-two. I told her I was a computer technician that just got laid off, and she asked me if I wanted to be interviewed and bring my resume with me tomorrow morning, and gave me the address of Innova's main headquarters. I asked her if her husband happened to be the vice-president of the company or had a position in the company that would impede me from working for the company, and she said that there was someone whose approval she wasn't obligated to ask of, but that she asked approval of anyway, but that that person was her wife. I was stunned. I hope she didn't notice the tears I was shedding. I don't see LGBT people as an abomination anymore.”

I was paralyzed. “Wow,” was all that I could manage to say after that.

“I just don't understand how most religious people condemn homosexuality and see it as the very-worst sin anyone could ever commit. Some of those people see it as worse than murder, and I don't—it's not illegal and it's not immoral. Lack of acceptance drives LGBT people to do things that defy their morals, their values, and contradict their essence and their character. These people are forced to marry and start families with people of their opposite genders, making themselves extremely unhappy. In some corners of the world they're getting stoned. Countless LGBT teens are either kicked out of home or forced into suicide because of their parents' outright refusal to accept them. Thinking back, I used to bully gay boys and I just feel really bad.”

“It's amazing how one moment can change one's whole life; something similar to what happened to me. I escaped death by a strand of hair after drinking too much Red Bull. Never again.”

We hugged.

He said to me, still hugging me, “I love you and I love Vanessa and our baby more than anything else in this world. I've seen the children of too many homophobic people come out as gay and these parents suffering because they think this is the greatest torment brought about by their offspring. I wouldn't have wanted to stay homophobic and for one of my kids to come out as gay. That would've broken my heart, so to keep that from happening, I decided to change my mind. I don't have to look down upon others to show my disagreement with a certain thing they're doing.”

I said, “I'm glad you feel that way because another thing you don't know about Melanie—well, you know nothing about her except her name, that she was my sister and that she passed on—is that she was gay. My parents didn't look down upon or reject her, but although she didn't commit suicide when she was growing up, all of the scars left by bullying caused her emotional state and her mental state to deteriorate. She turned to drugs as an escape from the pain, but we have yet to know what event in her life drove her to overdose and die. She kept that secret from us so well that when Mom got the call, she had to be Baker Acted and she stayed in the mental institution for the next three weeks because she just didn't understand how this happened. If she could've seen the signs...”

“Mom and Dad had a similar reaction when they 'got the call'.”

Vanessa interrupted our conversation by barging back into the room and bringing with her a piece of my favorite dessert ever—chocolate cheesecake that she and Mom had just bought at the grocery store, deli style. It wasn't a piece that had been cut from the whole cake at home before bringing it here. It had been freshly cut from the cake at the deli department in the grocery store, just for me. My family pampered me that day more than they ever had. I had no clue just how frightened they were of losing me. The kind gesture that was beyond kind, but indulging, gave me tears of happiness like I'd seldom cried in my whole life. I'd only cried like this thrice in my life: when I held Vanessa in my arms for the very first time, on my wedding day, and today, when I found out I was expecting my second child ever, a child that I wanted but I was sure would never come into my life.

I said, “Guys, this is so sweet of you!”

“When we were called saying that you'd passed out at the hospital after experiencing some beyond-bizarre behavior,” Vanessa explained, sitting right next to me on the hospital bed, “we were so scared of losing you.” She started to cry and hug me. “I don't know where I would be today if you had died, just like Aunt Melanie.” In between sobs, she said, “I just found out today would've been her birthday if she hadn't left us, and she was so important to you that I just missed her. If it weren't for her boundless love and support toward you, you wouldn't be with us today. Perhaps I would've never even been born. Maybe you would've still been alive, but locked up in some mental ward somewhere.”

Robert said, “This is the first time I've agreed completely with Vanessa in a while.”

Vanessa said, “Thanks, Dad,” and turned to look at Jessica, who was standing on the doorway of the room, grinning, and burst out laughing, prompting Jessica to laugh along with her. She'd just undergone a similar moment with her dad a few moments ago and I guess that when they put two and two together, they found this hilarious.

Robert said, “Few people can make laugh someone that was just crying, Katie, and you're one of those people. I hope you like the cake. Vanessa, it's time to go home. Your last few finals are tomorrow, and it won't hurt to go over the material one more time.”

Jess said, “Robert, I'm gonna ask Mom and Dad if I can just ride with you guys to your house. Vanessa and I are used to studying together.” When Robert looked away, she said to Vanessa by moving her lips but emitting no noise with her voice, “I have to talk to you about Emmanuel.”

I just shrugged and smiled.

Robert thought I did it for another reason. “That's okay with you, honey?”

Knowing what he was referring to, I said, “When have I not been okay with the girls studying together?”

Robert said, “The doctor warned me that your recent horrible experience might lead to radical changes in your attitude about certain things and certain behaviors, that it might turn you into a whole different person. Since you didn't hit your head, you might not be aware of it, Katie, but you had a minor stroke, and when something happens to a loved one's brain, family members ought to be wary.”

“Minor stroke,” I said. “The doctor must've told me about it, but maybe I just forgot.”

Robert said, “See, that's what 'the doctor' was referring to. You forgot his name. You never used to forget names.”

Smiling, I replied, “I remember his smile, though. No disrespect meant, hon, but that's something I'll never forget.”

Robert said, “I know why, and don't worry. I don't get jealous easy. Worry about me getting jealous when you kiss another dude and I just happen to walk in.”

Keeping my smile on my lips, I said, “That's gonna happen when pigs grow wings and fly.”

Vanessa and Jessica laughed.

Robert said, “All right, guys, let's go talk to Miranda and Fernando and ask them if Jess can go home with us to study for you guys' finals some more, all right?” They headed out of the room. “Who knows? Maybe Fernando will come with us to play a game of cards with me now that he asked for this whole day off, huh?”

They left.

 

* * *

 

That night, while my loved ones went on with what they had to do while I was gone, I fell asleep and started dreaming about someone I never thought I would. My fascination with Adam Lambert had never been overwhelming enough for me to start dreaming of him at random. I'd already experienced the most exhilarating moment because of him in real life, so I didn't think I'd start dreaming of him anyway, unless some horrible presage came in that something horrible was about to happen to him.

I could tell it was a dream because it didn't concord with anything I'd ever seen or experienced in real life. I was in the middle of the forest walking around for no justifiable reason. Everything was too green to be real. It wasn't raining yet, but the black clouds announced that it would. Suddenly, lightning struck. Everything that was happening here contradicted logic in real life. So many senseless things couldn't be happening at once, so my mind didn't let me overlook the fact that this was just a dream. In my subconscious mind, I remembered that I'd read in different places that dreams lasted an average of two minutes, tops, and that people who dreamed more than most people, dreamed so much because they'd have one short dream after the other, and that it was impossible to have—say, a night-long dream. I knew nothing about what they called lucid dreaming and I couldn't say it was possible or that it wasn't because I tended to believe based on personal experience. If I hadn't experienced it for myself, I'd always doubt it was possible. Earlier on in my life I'd believed things that I discovered were untrue as I continued to grow up, so that was my way to live now.

The dream that I hoped would last the two minutes they'd said, it continued on. In the dream I kept waiting for the downpour, but it never came down. The clouds continued to be so black that it was hard to assert it was daytime in this setting. Thunder kept rolling, but it kept striking me and knocking me down, but I'd always get back up, something else that clashed with what happened to people in real life when lightning struck them. This nightmare, rather than frightening, had taken a crazy turn, and I couldn't wait to wake up because stupid wasn't enough a word to describe it. This crazy nightmare didn't become frightening until the biggest tiger in the world started approaching me. 

I gasped and opened my mouth to scream, but no noise escaped from my mouth. I was paralyzed, completely unable to do anything at all to defend myself. My heart started pounding in real life when I realized that I couldn't even scream or cry out of sheer terror. In real life, as well as in my dream, I was just there, just waiting for the damned tiger to devour me. He even had his mouth open and his teeth in all their glory ready to shred his prey. When he closed his giant mouth over me, I saw my own blood and then...

Nothing.

Back in real life, I opened my eyes and my body was covered with what I thought was sweat, but then again, having just been told that I'd had a minor stroke, I started thinking this was the start of another stroke, except this one was much greater and it would bring about a lot more damaged. When a bright light came on in my room, I emitted a loud gasp and sat right up, something that up until now I just hadn't been able to do.

The nurse walked closer to me. 

I was too wrapped up in my nightmare to notice her name in her tag and address her by her name, so I just said, “Hey!”

The nurse said, “Hey,” her tone of voice and overall demeanor changing in the blink of an eye, “I rushed here because I heard you screaming.”

“Was I screaming? I felt my mouth hang agape, but I didn't hear any screaming coming out.”

“Well, it did,” she said, placing her hand firmly on my forehead to check for a fever. “Cold sweat. Not good.”

I blurted out, “I'm soaked.”

She noticed my clothes looked more like I had taken a shower with them still on me and was still wearing them even though they were soaking wet, and that I'd taken that hypothetical shower with cold water. “Oh, my God, I better get Dr.” I missed his name again, “in here,” she said and ran out of the room.

The doctor came into the room with the nurse. She got to work in taking my clothes off with her gloves on, and preparing me for a bath in the bed. The doctor gave a quick examination while the nurse bathed me, and then I was rushed for much-more thorough neurological and cardiovascular exams. The new prognosis was less than encouraging.

This time I'd just had a much-more serious stroke induced by that horrifying nightmare, and the process of rehabilitation would be longer and more complicated. Much more painful and exhausting. I failed to fathom why a nightmare about a tiger eating me alive had caused me this new stroke. I thought back to much-worse nightmares I'd had in the past that had never given way to anything even close to this. My doctors were right. I had become a totally-different person after my first stroke, and this one was starting to change me even more.

* * *


	6. A New Relationship Blooms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new relationship commences between the two most unlikely people: Vanessa Lieberman and Emmanuel Campbell.

The morning after the exhausting testing I underwent, my loved ones invaded my room once again, but this time, far from celebrating, they couldn't stop crying on my shoulder and holding me tight.

Expecting a response from the one person that she could try to reach out to that was the least likely to respond, Vanessa took the liberty of sending Adam Lambert a direct message from her own Twitter account, telling him how sad she was because her mother had just had her second stroke in a row. She sent Adam this message as soon as she noticed that Adam had been following her back ever since she got into that unfortunate incident with that evil bully that had gotten locked up for attacking Adam while he was performing a few months ago.

When Adam wrote her back, she showed his message to me from Jessica's phone, with had 4G broadband internet enabled on it, but not to use as she would wideband internet, but to use when she was away from home and she needed to look up something on the internet that her very life or future depended upon. I gasped when I read his message, which said, “It gets worse every time I hear anything about you guys, doesn't it?” I shed tears as I read on. “I keep thinking that if you guys and I hadn't met backstage, tragedy wouldn't have fallen upon you. I really don't know if there's anything I can do to change what's happened lately.”

Vanessa blurted out, smiling, “You should joke that he should help us pay your bills, but don't mean it. Just say it to see what he says.”

I said, “We do need someone to help us pay my medical bills, but asking Adam to do so, even if it were a joke, would be cruel. Adam's not to blame for any of this. Therefore what's happened shouldn't be placed on his shoulders. You know who's to blame? That horrible woman, Summer. She's the one that I'm gonna send my bills to. Before we encountered her, I knew nothing about rancor or revenge, but now, to be honest, Vanessa, it's all I think about. Adam and I are both her victims, and we both know she's not gonna be in jail for too long.”

I thought Vanessa would be disappointed in me and her attitude with me would change, that she would reproach me for being rancorous and vindictive, and after scolding me about what a hypocrite I'd been all these years, she would go right back to doing all of the wrong things and making me and Robert suffer like we did because of her a few years ago, but she smiled instead and said, “About time you grew some balls, Mom!”

I gasped.

“It sounds disrespectful and not classy, but it's the truth. I feel that all your life you've been too sweet and forgiving for a normal human being, in my opinion. Of all the people that have ever done you wrong, the only person you've kept out of your life is my uncle, and that's because he almost killed me, and you'd always say that I'm the one person in this world you can't live without. That I'm your world. Since I was born you've told me and showed me. This makes me think about all of the hurt I put you and Dad through, and when I was ready to come home and turn my life around, you were the one that said 'yes', and 'absolutely', without even the minimal doubt. Dad had his reservations, but you didn't think twice. It's time you showed people that they will no longer get away with hurting us, and Summer is your target, I'm not saying or doing anything to stop you. After you get better, you do what you have to do.”

I took her hand in mine. “Thank you so much for your support. To be honest, I expected a completely-different reaction.”

“What, did you think I'd just go back to my old ways? Never. You and Dad don't know what happened while I was away from you that made me turn my life around for good. That's the last thing I'd do, taking the easy way out. That's what cowards do.”

“You were only ten then,” I said.

“Yes, I was, but my age at the time is no excuse for what I did. Mom, I wanted to talk to you about something that Grandpa said. Dad just started working for Mrs. Spencer, but by the time he gets his first paycheck, your hospital bills will be past due, and Grandpa doesn't want that to happen, so he talked to me about going ahead and paying your hospital bills.”

“I'm glad I was good enough to his son for him to think I deserve it for him to do something so kind.”

“Are you kidding? You don't know how much Dad cried when you were admitted to the hospital for the first time. He said you were his first and one and only love.”

“You know, those are things he seldom tells me.”

“He'd rather show you than just telling you, I guess. Mom, now that I'm here and that we have a moment to ourselves,” she said and sat on the edge of my bed, “I need to talk to you.”

“Tell me anything.”

“I have a boyfriend.”

I smiled. “The story between your father and me could be repeated. Who's your boyfriend?”

Astonished and rolling her eyes, she said, “Mom!” She must've thought I would freak out and scream bloody murder.

“Why did you expect an adverse reaction from me? My relationship with your dad started when he and I were your age, so how would it make sense for me to turn around and reproach you for starting a relationship with someone now?”

“Seriously? I was certain you'd turn out to be one of those parents that say to their daughters,” she said and her voice changed to a mocking, dramatic one, like she was performing in a Shakespeare play, “don't make the same mistakes I did,” and faked a cry so good that the nurse that was passing by peeked through my door thinking that she was crying for real, but she was quick to give her an apologetic smile. The nurse shut the door and went on her way. Dinner was about to be served for everyone within fifteen minutes anyway, and I'd already gotten my bath in the bed. 

I laughed hysterically and I could see her eyes widening. “You're good, you know that? I think that when you turn eighteen you ought to consider getting a head start in theater. But no, you know what? If I took on that hypocritical attitude, it would make sense if my relationship with your dad hadn't progressed into matrimony, if we hadn't been as happy as we have. This isn't to say that your relationship with this boy will turn out the same. He and you are not Robert and I. We resemble one another, but our personalities are different, and how your relationship will turn out depends solely on the two of you. Is this boy the boy named Emmanuel that Jessica told you that she had to talk to you about the last time she, Fernando and Miranda came over to see me?”

“You're too good. Jess and I thought that you thought that she and I had to talk about Emmanuel because he was her love interest, not mine.”

“Why wouldn't Emmanuel be your love interest, honey?”

“I'm a nerd, Mom.”

“Would you stop it? Seriously, that annoys me. You're letting people around you get to you too much. No one that truly loves you would change anything about you, Vanessa. How many times do I have to say it? Nerd, prom queen, rich girl—I don't care the type of girl you are, and neither does your dad, or your grandparents, or Jessica. We love you. Just because you're not a prom queen that doesn't mean you're unattractive to every guy that passes you by. Hey, I know Emmanuel!” I smiled. “Why are you so astonished that he set his eyes on you? He's not exactly a jock or a 'cool guy'. He's attractive, but he's also 'nerdy'.”

“Anyway,” she sighed. “Thanks for the speech. I needed you to remind me how 'OMG awesome' you think I am. Emmanuel says I'm the most beautiful girl in the world. I'm not the kind of person who'd scare the crap out of little kids walking down the street, but...”

I wrapped her in my arms, but I could no longer hug her as tight as I used to. However she made up for it by hugging me tighter than she used to. “I don't care what you say,” I said. “To your mother, you will always be the most beautiful girl in the world, and then you're going to grow up to be the most beautiful woman in the world. I've been trying to raise you like my mother raised me and your aunt. We were her world, and don't you know? When Melanie came out as a lesbian, my mom's reaction was to give her the biggest hug, remind her how much she loved her, and that she didn't care what the kids in school said about her, that she could always come home when she needed us and her arms would always be wide open for her.”

“I hear Grandpa wasn't as supportive.”

“That's true. Now that I think back to the few years we had left with Melanie before she moved out, our dad made her suffer saying horrible things to her like he would never accept a lesbian, and that it was bad enough that after my uncle he could never have another son to have a lesbian for a daughter, that she was an abomination...”

“Oh, my God.”

My eyes welled with tears as I continued. “That she better wake up, smell the roses, and get with a man so she could be a real woman or she'd never be his daughter, that he denounced her...and you know, now that I put two and two together, I believe that your aunt started doing drugs and died after her last OD because our dad drove her to that, and I believe that's why Dad can't control his tears every time her name is mentioned.”

“My aunt's birthday, yeah, Grandpa spent that whole day crying, and he didn't eat all day, he couldn't sleep that night, and you know, he's just—he hasn't been performing his best at his job lately. He's so close from retirement and he's...”

“Melanie will always haunt my dad, always. He knows he's responsible for Melanie's death. She turned to drugs to escape the pain, and now she's no longer with us. Changing the subject...”

“Yes, I think that's the best we can...”

 

The nurse came in with my dinner, set my eating table in front of me and set the tray on it. 

Vanessa said, “If she needs help feeding, I'll feed her. It's my summer vacation, I just took my last-few final exams, and I have no problem being with my mom all day if need be.”

The nurse smiled and said, “Thank you so much, Miss Lieberman.” Judging by the way she called my daughter Miss Lieberman, she must've worked as a maid at the house of some really-stuck up rich people before she studied nursing and got her degree. I concluded that because as a nurse, I'd never seen another nurse address the family members of a patient formally. Maybe it had happened before when I hadn't been around, but I still thought that, beyond being weird, what happened with the nurse made me sad for her. She must've been horribly mistreated in the past. Otherwise she wouldn't treat people around her the way she did. Rather than just talking, she sounded more like she was trembling. If I was wrong about her having worked as a maid at someone's mansion in the past, perhaps she was the victim of an abusive and controlling husband.

Vanessa asked, “Do you need to be fed, Mom?” concerned.

I said, “Let me try,” and took the lids off of everything that was served with my meal. I picked up the fork and Vanessa was watching me very closely to see if I would drop it inadvertently, but luckily for me, when I took my first forkful of the brown rice and vegetable main dish that I was served, I didn't drop the fork and instead, I tried to take it up to my mouth, but just to make sure, Vanessa took my hand in hers, and guided the fork to my mouth and fed me. I chewed, but I had to do it slower than normal because as a result of this stroke, my speech hadn't been slurred and my mouth hadn't been left 'half-open' as I called that condition, but the movement in my extremities was limited and my muscles were a little atrophied resulting in me having more difficulty than most others to chew my food.

Vanessa took her time to feed me everything little by little until the tray was empty. She discarded the containers of the foods in the trash and left the empty tray on the eating table for the nurse to come back and retrieve it later.

I said, “Thank you so much for feeding me.”

Vanessa said, “I've always believed that it's a moral obligation for us sons and daughters to come through for our parents when they need us the most. I've always thought about taking care of you and Dad when you guys grew old and were incapacitated, but that time in our lives happened to arrive way too early. Besides, it's not hard for me to make the decision to feed you when you fed me as a baby and changed my diapers. It is my belief. When we're children, our parents take care of us. When our parents are elders or left handicapped or incompetent, if we're able, we take care of them. If sons and daughters don't take care of our parents when you need us the most, who will?”

“Carmen instilled in you most of your beliefs about life in general and how human beings should do things and what we shouldn't do, right?”

“I'll never forget Carmen, abandoned by her whole family for God knows what reason. We had to take care of her and although you did most of the work, well, when I was little I remember I helped feed her a few times and unfortunately, that's how I learned.”

 

* * *

 

Emmanuel went to visit me later on with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. He and Vanessa had been friends for two years, and it was just now, a few days ago, that their romantic relationship had started. All of this time he'd been thinking about me. He'd never met me in person because he and Vanessa had never come over to one another's houses. I never knew the reason why his parents didn't allow Vanessa to sleep over at Emmanuel's house or even to come over for a little while, but I knew mine and Robert's reason. Like her aunt, Vanessa had had problems with illicit drugs, and that is the reason why we almost lost her, not because she'd been sleeping around after hanging out with the wrong crowd, but she had been committing petty thefts and breaking into homes to steal stupid things. She was lucky that she wasn't in jail for a much-longer time. We were more than lucky that she survived because her aunt didn't. I wasn't sure if Vanessa was a virgin, but if she had been sleeping around, Robert and I would've heard about it. After all, mothers in this town got offended when people talked bad about their daughters, but they had no problem in talking crap about other people's daughters, and now, in the era where social media predominated and people were sharing it online every time they took a shower or went to the bathroom, and even uploaded 'selfies' taken in the bathroom in various situations and positions, the mothers of the girls in Vanessa's school wouldn't have hesitated in uploading a picture or a video of Vanessa in a compromising position if they came across it. The problem was that if there were any pictures of videos of my daughter, all that they would be was footage from the cameras of local stores that I am ashamed to say Vanessa shoplifted at and constantly got forgiven for because she was great at faking tears and pretending to feel things that she didn't. Luckily for me and Robert, Vanessa wasn't playing those mind games anymore. She knew the disastrous consequences those behaviors conveyed. I was elated to know that a guy as intelligent as Emmanuel, who was known to be gifted, had set his eyes on Vanessa after two years of being her friend. They were incapable of ignorance. Vanessa wasn't considered gifted, but ever since she turned from the incorrect path, she had straight A's again and was back to being the dedicated and ambitious student she'd always been. Emmanuel was her age, but he was a senior in high school now. This past March, he'd skipped several grades. Most of his classmates just couldn't catch up with him, and every test he'd taken to measure his intelligence and his skills was at college level.

He walked closer to me with the flowers in his hands, but the look in his face couldn't be more grim. “Mrs. Lieberman,” he said, “these flowers are for you,” and extended his hand, giving them to me.

I took the flowers and smelled them. Yellow roses. He must've been aware that throughout the years they'd always say that yellow roses symbolized friendship. This gesture was sweet. “Thank you, Emmanuel.”

“I have to help my dad at his mechanic shop, so I can't be here for long unfortunately. I just came here to see if you were doing any better.”

I smiled. “I am.” I said to Vanessa, “Sweetie, would you please leave us alone for a minute?”

Vanessa got up from the chair they had at my bedside in the room and said, “Sure, Mom,” and said to Emmanuel, “I'll be right back to say goodbye,” and walked out of the room closing the door behind her.

I said, “Emmanuel, I need you to tell me, from the bottom of your heart, how you feel about Vanessa.”

He sat where Vanessa had been sitting, on that chair. He looked me right in the eyes after having kept his face down since he came in here. “I love her. I love her a lot.”

“Are you in love with her or is this just fun for you?”

“In my book there's no such thing as 'having fun' with a girl like that. Vanessa's my first relationship, casual or serious.”

Astonished, I said, “You're kidding.”

He said, “No. Don't get me wrong. This doesn't mean that I'm still a virgin. Frankly, I wish I were.”

“Are you saying that you were a rape victim?”

He nodded. 

“I'm so sorry. I haven't faced the same hurdle, but I have family members who have, and I can't imagine...” I let my head down for a minute. “How have you gotten through this?”

“I've been getting professional help for two years. That was the reason that my parents, my little brother and I moved here, because we wanted the wounds to start healing, and in my parents' opinion there was no better way to achieve that than getting a brand-new start at another city, far away from my predator. She didn't get away with it. She's in prison and she will be identified as a sex offender for the rest of her life, but I've got a long way to go. I'm trying to get through it because unlike what most people think that know about this, it wasn't something I enjoyed. I never consented. That's what makes it so much worse. I couldn't have. I'm not a saint by any means, but I knew that having sex with a wrong woman was wrong and I never wanted to, but she overpowered me in ways that people can't even start to imagine. Thanks to Vanessa, though, I got the new start I wanted. It was thanks to your daughter that I found the consolation and comfort that I needed. Our friendship evolved into a relationship, but I've known your story with your husband since I met her, and I want you to know that if the story repeats itself, God forbid, it won't be because of me. I know we're way too young to like they say take it to the next level, and I have my own serious issues to deal with before even thinking about becoming sexually active again. I've got other priorities. Other goals. A few years from now, I know I'm gonna start focusing on things most other teenagers do, but right now, my goal is to make something of myself.”

* * *


	7. Our Idol Continues Trying To Reach Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What a sweetheart Adam Lambert turned out to be!

I got home after being in the hospital with my mom for three days straight, going back and forth only to take showers and change clothes. I understood Mom perfectly, her resentment against that horrible woman that ruined our lives just to satiate her unjustified hate against LGBT people. That woman made me think about my deceased aunt, who was gay and relentlessly bullied by her own father, something that my young mind still couldn't fathom, and by kids at school. I went into my room, took my shoes off, started walking the carpet in my socks, and sat on the foot of my bed. I didn't understand why falling in love with someone of one's same sex was considered so wrong and dirty. One couldn't help who one fell in love with. I'd never had lustful feelings for another girl before, not even envious feelings. Why envy other girls' looks if I had always looked okay enough to not scare the shit out of passersby on the street? I never thought, though, that at this age, feelings of rancor would wash over me like the biggest wave and I would become obsessed with revenge. It was because of that horrible woman, whose name I didn't even know if it was really Summer or a pseudonym she used online, she'd destroyed our lives. Ever since she spotted us and sent me those disparaging tweets, our family has been disintegrating, not because we've been growing farther and farther apart from each other, but because ever since the night we met Adam Lambert and she just couldn't mind her own damn business, the most horrible things imaginable had been happening to us so far. I wish that my parents would have Internet access in the house again so I could stay in touch with Adam.

My phone broke my reverie when it rang. I looked at the screen and it was Emmanuel. Our only means for being in touch from now on were our phones. Our parents thought we were too young to be coming over to each other's houses and that things that they didn't want to happen between us surely would happen if we came to each other's house every day. They couldn't make us fall out of love with each other, but they could keep us from having the chance to give in to our feelings, and they were. They sure were. Emmanuel's parents were using this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of Emmanuel skipping over to the last year of high school in order to keep us apart. By the time I went to high school, he would've graduated. As a result of my stupid tirades at age eleven and my recklessness in doing everything that someone my age was not supposed to do, and me not doing my classwork, homework or studying for my exams then, I was held back one year. Besides, how would a relationship between a high-school senior and a high-school freshman be seen by others? In this 2014, that's what most teenagers were doing, but no one dared to talk openly about it for the fear of their parents freaking out and talking crap—and punishing their unruly kids that they thought were the holiest of saints, their darlings.

I answered the phone at the third ring. “Hey, Em, what's up?”

He said, “Hey! How are you doing? How's your mom?”

“I just came home from the hospital. She's the biggest fighter ever, doing so much better lately. She just won't give up. This isn't the first time she's faced great adversity, you know?”

“Yeah, I know, and I admire her a lot. I wish my mother was more like her to be honest. My mother just got back on her antidepressants. I don't know what she's depressed about this time because I always get the same response every time I ask, 'mind your own business'... but look at your mom. She's recovering from a stroke and she doesn't seem depressed to me.”

“Even at the time when I was doing the wrong things she didn't succumb to depression. She would cry for me day in and day out but she never seem like she needed any professional help. I know my mom, and if she had felt her knees giving out and felt she needed to go to the doctor because something was seriously wrong, she would've, but she never did. The farthest she went when it came to that was counseling, thank goodness. My mom is strong.”

“I'm glad. I just hope Mom gets better soon. Dad doesn't know what to do anymore. Lately, they argue many times every day about the stupidest things, but it's not the usual arguments that people get into with other people that are over after a few words, but the whole nine yards, you know, screaming, calling each other horrible names, throwing things around the house...”

I gasped. “And no one has called the police?”

“I wish no one had. The police come here every night, but Mom and Dad have a way of making them think that it wasn't that big of a deal and that nothing bad happened at all, or they come at the police with their 'I tripped' cliché and...my parents are psychiatrists for good reason, you know? They know how to work people.”

“Scary.”

“You have no idea. Listen, remember when you gave me your twitter password just for me to keep track of your direct messages?”

“Sure, you asked me before you went to see Mom at the hospital, to trust you in having my password, and I did. I don't tweet much lately anyway, and if someone doesn't sign in to their account in a long time, their account is shown as inactive. I have Jessica sign in to it for me, too, just to keep it active, but I have you reading my direct messages. I want to know if this woman that calls herself Summer has been stupid enough to give me more ammo against her by having family members and friends send me horrible messages on Twitter.”

“Her desire for revenge blinds her, sweetheart,” he said, but to me, his tone sounded weird, as if he were glad that Summer was still sending me messages, but for the wrong reasons, “and unfortunately, she has been sending you messages, and I've been printing them out.”

“Is that right?” I started tidying up my room by picking up random things I'd left on the floor before going to the hospital and staying with my mom those past few days. “You know, with everything she's been through lately, going to jail for her stupid quest for revenge against Adam and me, you know? We all thought that she would stop, but...”

“I know why she keeps this going, as stupid as she is. It's because she's deranged. Don't forget you're talking to the son of two psychiatrists, mind you, the best in town, wherever they go. I've been learning about the human mind since my life began. I know these behaviors. Summer is not right in the head, and I'm not talking about her simply not letting go of the hair of you and Adam Lambert because I know that intense loathing drives people to become obsessed to the point where they absolutely will not stop until they destroy their perceived enemy. I'm talking about the things she's saying to you. I wish I could show you these messages without getting in trouble or without making possible another stroke for your poor mother, who's already been through the worst hell because of this sociopath, this sicko. I hope you know that this woman is to blame for all of the horrible things that have been happening to you and your family.”

“Tell me what it is that she said that has you thinking that she's...”

“She's out of her freaking mind. Someone that's okay in the head would never say these things to anyone, especially someone who's just an acquaintance to him or her. I know these are nothing but words over the phone from a third party and you wouldn't record this phone--”

“Never.”

“So listen to this.”

I sat back on the foot of my bed for this one. I knew I had to. My palms started sweating and the phone started slipping out of my hand, so I had to hold it in my ear with my other hand.

“She says that she's going to rip your clothes off you and rape you with any object she can find, and that she's gonna...” He stopped for a minute. Even though he's heard about people saying these things to other people for years, the fact was that he was still fourteen years old only, and that as a result, his mind was a little too fragile to handle these images that suddenly came to his head. He continued, “pour acid all over you and burn your skin as you scream...” he didn't speak for several minutes, so I thought he'd just decided to stop because it was proving to be too much for him to handle. Then his tone changed. It went from night to day, a day so sunny that the sunlight blinded you when it came through your window at around eight o'clock in the morning where you lived. “But on the upside,” he said, and I knew he'd just decided to read to me messages that other people had left me, messages that he knew I needed to hear to be able to sleep normally tonight, “Adam Lambert cares a lot more about you guys than you guys could've imagined because it hasn't been an every day thing, but he still sends you messages once every few weeks or so. I can tell it's not out of more love for you than he feels for his other fans, but he's really worried about your mom. It's like your mom haunts him because his messages, I know them by heart because they say the same thing. 'Is Mrs. Lieberman okay? How has she recovered from her latest stroke so far?' and much-more up-close-and-personal messages like, 'Let me know if there's anything I can do to help, if there are any specialists I can help you guys connect to in order to assist in her recovery'.”

This time it was I that couldn't say anything for several minutes. After regaining my breath, I said, “Wow, he is really into this. You're right, he can't get over what happened because he feels responsible.”

“But you and I know he's not responsible. And we also know who is.”

“What are you planning to do with those direct messages you printed out?”

“I printed his direct messages, too, you know.”

“Did you write him back?”

“Yes, I wrote him back, but I didn't try to imitate you. I told him that I'm your boyfriend and not to worry about anything, that he's not responsible at all, and that it's not his fault that we all happened to run into a psycho during his meet and greet backstage. It took me several direct messages to do so, but I explained to him that Mrs. Lieberman is doing a lot better. A few days later, he replied to me insisting that if Mrs. L needed anything, to please let him know how he could help because I'd succeeded in persuading him he wasn't to blame for what happened, but the fact of the matter was that the lives of Mrs. L and her entire family started unraveling after they left his show. I printed out everything.”

“Thank you for your support, Em.”

“Hey, don't mention it. Before we became boyfriend and girlfriend, we'd been the best of friends, remember? I'm the one friend you kept from almost everyone.”

“That's because I didn't want your parents freaking out. It's not that I'm afraid of what they'd do to me because they'd never see this little girl as a threat, but what I did fear was that they'd take you away and that I'd never see you again.”

“My parents do have issues, but their problems are one another, make sense? They don't have problems with me because I mind my own business and because I do what I can to not only meet, but also exceed their expectations. I think what's going on is that there's something my dad's doing that's making my mom suffer a lot more than usual, but I'm not going to delve into that. I just hope that if it's true that they've gotten to the point where they can't stand one another, that they just get it over with and get divorced and for each one of them to go his or her own way just so that the damned fighting and throwing things around the house will stop. I haven't seen bruises on the faces or bodies of either one of them, but the truth is that their non-stop fighting is starting to get to me, and when I go to college, the last thing I'm gonna do is to move to a dorm because at the time I'm going to be fifteen—way too young in my opinion to move away from home, and a very dangerous situation, considering that most of the students there will be ages eighteen or older. No, I'm not going to go through that again. My plan is to continue to abstain from sex until my wounds heal, so when it comes to that, we're safe.”

“Yes, we are, because nobody knows this for sure, even my parents, but I'm a virgin because I think I'm too young to have sex.”

“That's perfect for us. If we do get that far, if our relationship blossoms, we'll take the next step only when we are both ready, because call me a weirdo, but I never enjoy my own thoughts about sex.”

“Believe me. I understand. Well, do you think we can meet at the local Burger King for you to show me those messages, or...?”

“I'm going to ask Dad and I'm going to call you back, okay? If you want, we can go to Burger King; I can go with my dad, you can go with your dad, and we can all talk. We'd go by ourselves, but we don't have driver's licenses, and I haven't bothered to learn to drive. If I spend my savings on a cab fare, Mom will think that I'm up to no good. My parents might seem uptight to you, but trust me, my mom is much more uptight than my dad. I'm her only son and...her mind's much more complicated. I fail to understand why she's so overprotective. I'm gonna miss my friends. I haven't gotten to go out with them this summer even once. I used to, but ever since my mom got depressed...”

“Ask your dad and call me back, okay?”

“OK, sweetie. I'll talk to you in a few minutes.” He hung up.

 

It was astonishing how Emmanuel and Adam were the only two people in this world who could make me feel better after hearing the horrible messages that Summer had used her minions to send me. I could imagine her friends visiting her in jail and her giving them notes of what to send to me in these messages, and then I imagined these people sending me her messages from different, but sock-puppet type, in other words fake, twitter accounts. I wanted to have access to the internet again, but every time I heard about Summer, I would think it over until I would end up deciding against it.

Emmanuel called me back ten minutes after the last time we talked. At the time, I had just finished listening to 'Shady', the third track from the #1 Billboard album, 'Trespassing'. Gosh, the more I listened to 'For Your Entertainment' or 'Trespassing', the more I yearned for Adam to release his third album already. I was entertained watching his concerts with Queen on YouTube, but when it came to my favorite singer, whoever it was at the moment, I could never get enough of his or her music, and for five years, Adam Lambert was that special singer that grabbed a hold of my heart to never let go.

I took the call. “Em, what did your dad say?”

“I have good news and bad news, but I know that most people who hear that want to hear the bad news first. I wanted to meet with you and your dad at Burger King today, but Dad said it had to be tomorrow, because he's not feeling very well, and he doesn't think he could drive and sit down with us for he doesn't know how much time.”

“Did you show him everything so that he knows that we're not bullshitting him?”

“Yes, of course. I showed him everything, and he agreed with me that this woman is deranged. He says what most psychiatrists say, that it's impossible to make an accurate diagnosis unless he meets her at his office and hears her talking, which is impossible...” he chortled, “but that she's definitely not okay in the head, that her behavior is extreme and irrational, considering she has no reason to harass you like she is, and even less to say such horrible things to you.”

“Have you shown him Adam's messages to me by any chance?”

“Yes, and he says he's impressed. He says that, that he's ever seen, Adam Lambert is the first celebrity to show so much preoccupation for something bad that's happened to one of his fans around him or because of him—that usually, celebrities just let their legal teams handle these kinds of situations and go on with their lives, but that Adam seems to have made it his mission to ensure that everything's okay with Mrs. L. He never thought he'd grow to admire Adam as a person.”

* * *


	8. A New Friend, An Old Enemy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Liebermans make a new friend and encounter an old enemy, and the first name of both of those men happens to be Adam.

It was the morning after my last phone conversation with Emmanuel, and since Mom still hadn't been able to come home, I got up that day and did all the chores, everybody's chores. My dad was out helping my grandmother, his mother, clean her house, and I was here, cleaning our entire house, and doing mine and Dad's laundry, dishes, and making breakfast for both of us, just in case he would still be hungry after having breakfast at Grandma's. Grandma always made sure to have enough breakfast for him because he would go over to help her clean her house every single weekend. My grandfather was way too weak and sick to be able to do any house chores at all, although he complained about wanting to help his wife and not being able to. My dad and his dad seemed to have come from a whole other planet. After all, we were in the year 2014, but this was still a man's world, very much so, and chauvinism seemed to be a cancer that was immune to all sorts of treatments. If my great-grandfather were still alive, he would've bullied his son and his grandson for being less than men, for doing their house chores, something that in my great-grandfather's book, was a woman's job. It was now that I really understood Mom's hard work. She was a nurse that could work the day shift and the night shift just the same, and adjust to constant grueling changes in her sleep cycle, and when she came home, she would do most of the chores, asking me to only do my own laundry, clean the bathroom after using it, and do my own dishes, while she would do most of the work for her and Dad. Dad appreciated her dedication—until her strokes devastated the lives of our entire family. It was then that Dad decided that from now on he would do all the chores while Mom focused on her own recovery, and he talked to Mom about it yesterday when he went over to visit her at the hospital. What he didn't tell Mom, however, was that nothing would change when her process of recovery and rehabilitation concluded, that after all that hurdle, since he was bigger and stronger, he would do all the chores from now on. In Robert Lieberman's world, compared to Mom's daily work, his work was much less exhausting. All that he had to do was to fix other people's computers and go home when he finished fixing each one of them, like nothing, and most times, he didn't even have to leave the house because customers would just drop off their computers here when he worked on the weekends. The work he did for his nice boss, whose name I had forgotten because of my constant nervousness, was a Monday through Friday job, and luckily for us, very well paid. It dawned on me that my parents didn't keep the house disconnected from the worldwide web because of lack of money for it, but just because they didn't want us to have to face any more complications because of what they now called the 'evil internet'.

Dad came home from my grandmother's house at six o'clock in the afternoon that day. He called out to me, but not yelling too loud, “Vanessa, are you ready to go? This is the latest we can leave for Burger King to be able to make it back home in time. A new customer just called me for a last-minute laptop repair, a writer who needs emergency file recovery. Has Emmanuel called you?”

I went downstairs and met him at the front door. “Sorry, Dad. I'm not ready yet because I wasn't sure exactly when you'd make it home.”

“It's okay. You can get ready now, can't you?”

“Of course. I'm just surprised you're not mad.”

“Why would I get mad? My phone was dead, I have no car charger, and there was no possible way of calling you to let you know that you best get ready because I was on my way.”

Still surprised, I said, “OK, Dad. I'll go take a quick shower and change.”

“Go. I'm gonna make me some tea while I wait.”

 

* * *

 

When I got out of the shower, my phone that sat on top of my bed notified me of two missed calls and one new text message. When I read the message it said, Dad and I are on our way to Burger King. I think you're getting ready right now. If so, please text me back.

I took my time in getting dressed. I put on a plain black tank top, the simplest style, nothing spaghetti-strap or anything like that, and my favorite jeans that weren't tight enough to mark my body. If Mom saw me dressing any more daring, she would freak, and under the circumstances I was afraid to do something I knew that she disapproved of even when I knew she wasn't watching, because I knew that what she couldn't see with her own eyes, she would hear about. I didn't want to add to her suffering. I was her only daughter. I didn't want to be once again the reason for her anguish like I used to be not too long ago. Disappointment because of me would be fatal to my mom. If she couldn't handle a nightmare, something that she was used to because she'd had vivid and terrifying nightmares since she was a little girl, I couldn't imagine how she would feel if she found out that I was dressing too provocatively. I knew that her first thought would be that I was slowly going back to my old erroneous ways, and that would kill her. I put on my prettiest boots, a Christmas present from my dad, took my phone, put it in my pocket, and left the room.

I texted Emmanuel telling him that Dad and I were just now leaving the house. While Dad and I were getting in the car, Emmanuel replied with a smiley face and when I got that message while fastening my seatbelt, I smiled. Dad handed me his phone just so that I could tell him about the new calls and text messages coming in. He'd lost his bluetooth three weeks ago, so he could no longer just use his phone hands-free like he used to, so he had me as what they called, 'his designated texter'. I was glad I was too young to drive because I was nervous to turn around and do this exact same thing to someone else. I couldn't get over how a few years ago I was constantly accused of being a liar and a manipulator, and a gossip. Since I was doing the wrong things with my friends when I was away from home, everyone else that was doing around me things that they knew were wrong, when I would turn around and disclose their darkest secrets, they'd take advantage of my disadvantage of being a person of questionable character and accuse me of lying, and of course, all of their loved ones would take their word over mine. It was funny how, fast forward two and a half years, all of those dark secrets that I'd chanted about to deaf ears were coming out in full force, and ruining lives and families that those people involved tried so hard to protect, by accusing the few of us who knew of being out of our minds, or doing everything in their power to get us out of their way. My mom wasn't talking crap to me when she kept saying to me that secrets always, always came out—that some secrets took longer than others to rear their ugly heads, but that no secret in this world stayed buried forever, and that when people took secrets with them to their graves, the outcomes were usually a thousand times worse.

Dad received a few text messages from the writer who'd lost all of her manuscripts by accidentally pressing the very wrong keys on her keyboard at the very wrong time. I read the messages to him and he told me what he wanted to say back to her, which I wrote to her word for word, as if these thoughts were really mine. Then, I received a few cute text messages to my phone from my sweetheart Emmanuel, which made me smile. Fernando called this type of relationship a 'holding hands' or 'puppy love' kind of relationship, something platonic, love that wasn't consummated in the way that people usually consummated their relationship or marriage, but then again, we'd only been dating for a few days and it wasn't like Emmanuel was doing anything to seduce me. On the contrary. He was showing me how much he loved me by being supportive to my family at our hardest times, but he wasn't making his affection for me sexual in any way. We'd kissed on the lips, but it was a 'peck', not a French kiss. I assumed giving him a French kiss would flood his mind with his darkest and most painful memories of his unwanted sexual experiences, so to avoid being the reason of his pain, I refrained from kissing him, as badly as I wanted to. My love for my best friend overpowered the desire for my boyfriend.

 

Dad and I arrived at Burger King. This locale was only five miles away from our house, but it was ten miles away from Emmanuel's. Emmanuel was standing by the passenger's door of his dad's car, leaning over it, just to let me know this was his and his dad's car. I didn't see Dr. Campbell. He must've been waiting inside. We kept our beautiful friendship alive and communication open before, solely when we were in school and by talking on the phone, but I hadn't yet gotten to meet his parents in person. His mother wasn't here. She must be at the house of a family member of hers because Emmanuel had told me before that he'd invited her to have lunch with him at Burger King and she said that she despised fast food. Her attitude didn't seem stuck up to me. It wasn't like she would've rather dined in the finest restaurants. She actually preferred to make home-cooked meals, according to what Emmanuel had told me about her. Fast foods must make her sick in the stomach or something, like she literally couldn't keep down a burger or fries. Maybe the problem was the oil these restaurants used to cook their foods.

Emmanuel gave me a big hug, and he, Dad and I went inside and met Dr. Campbell. Dad and Dr. Campbell shook hands and sat down. While Dad and I were ready to order our food, Emmanuel and Dr. Campbell were already almost finished eating. It was obvious that Dr. Campbell didn't share Mrs. Campbell's aversion toward fast food, but he wasn't its biggest cheerleader, either, because all that he'd had to eat was one of those dollar burgers, not for its price, but for its size, along with small French fries and a small drink.

Dad asked, “Vanessa, would you please order food for us while I talk to Dr. Campbell?”

Dr. Campbell said, smiling, “My name is Adam. You may call me Adam.”

I couldn't help widening my eyes, and when Emmanuel saw my reaction, he just smiled, understanding it better than anyone because he was just as dedicated a fan to Christina Aguilera as I was to Adam. He'd been listening to her music since he was in his mother's womb. That was the music his mom would play for him when she was pregnant with him in an effort to get him to calm down and stop kicking so much, but now, he found her to be the very sexiest female singer in the whole world, despite the fact that she was old enough to be his mother. My love for Adam, however, wasn't lustful, and he knew this. My admiration for him was just too great to hide, but that was all it was—admiration. “What do you want, Dad?”

Dad said, “Just a whopper meal, with medium onion rings, though, and a medium Coke—regular whopper, though, not double or triple.”

I said, “Got it. How much money do you have reserved for this food, though? I have to know so that I know what to get more or less.”

“I have twenty dollars for my food. My meal costs almost ten,” Dad said.

“OK,” I said, “then I'm going to get the meal that costs ten dollars or less. Thanks for doing this for me, Dad.” I left to go get mine and Dad's food.

From a distance, it seemed that Dad and—Adam—that took a while to sink in, Dr. Campbell's first name, were making great friends just because they couldn't stop smiling at each other and laughing. They seemed more like wacky cartoon characters than real people to me, but I loved how this had started. I didn't think Adam would be happy about my new relationship with Emmanuel. Adam. Adam. Every time I thought about that name, the only guy named Adam that came to mind automatically was surnamed Lambert. There was another little boy back when I was in the fourth grade, named Adam, but since he was a bully to me, I was quick to block him from my mind. His memories, however, were trapped in my subconscious. That wasn't good. For now, I chose to focus on the two nice men in my life named Adam. I could see where Emmanuel got all of his handsomeness except Dr. Campbell didn't even wear glasses and braces like Emmanuel did, and he also dressed differently from his son, with casual, rather than formal clothing. I looked away from Dad and Dr. Campbell and got in line to order the food. My shoe touched the foot of the guy right in front of me, and when the guy turned around to see who the person behind him was, I let out a loud gasp and dropped to the ground in a sitting position.

My God. This was Adam the bully. Could my life get any worse? Hadn't all I'd been through these past few grueling weeks been enough?

Emmanuel got up to help me in a matter of a second, and he didn't care who was on the line standing behind me. He just pushed them away and got to me, helping me up. The guy that was standing in front of me clearly didn't recognize me, because if he had, he would've understood why I was still standing there, but unable to stand straight, needing Emmanuel to keep me on my feet, my mouth still hanging agape, and my eyes watering.

The bully said, the tone in his voice desperate, but apologetic, “I swear I didn't do anything to her! I don't know why she's reacting to me like this!”

Emmanuel argued, “You're obviously someone from her past that she's scared to death of! Are you sure you don't remember her at all?”

The bully said, “I swear I don't understand--”

Emmanuel cut him off as Dr. Campbell and Dad got right behind him, Dad hugging me tight. “I repeat, are you sure? Look at her! Look at her very closely! Are you sure you don't remember her?”

Dr. Campbell said, “Young man, please don't play innocent with us. No one in their right mind would react to a total stranger like this.”

The bully said back, “Unless she's hallucinating.”

I almost had a heart attack when the bully said that. How dared he share such disdain toward the wounds he knew he'd cut into that had already been scarring? What was he, a sociopath?

Dr. Campbell said, “How dare you to say that she could be crazy? If this is true, then you're one of the bastards in her life that made her crazy! Look, I've only heard about her for two years, and it's today, right now, that I meet her for the very first time, but I'm a psychiatrist, and I know that when someone reacts this swift and downright terrified of someone who seems like a stranger, it's because that person is not really a stranger to the person that he or she scared out of his or her mind, and from the way you're acting, saying she could be hallucinating, I could tell that you straight-out don't give a damn, do you?”

Emmanuel said, “Come on, man, cut out the bullshit and tell us who the hell you are, man. Don't you get that we're way too smart for your silly mind games?”

“Look, sir, I understand you're defending your daughter,” the bully said, but looking right at Dr. Campbell, not at Dad, making us look at each other in total shock, and me, well my first thought was wondering if I really looked so much like Mom that at first glance people couldn't tell who my father was even when he was right there next to me, “but I swear, I really don't know her, I don't remember her, and that's why I said she could be hallucinating. I didn't say it out of malice, man. I don't know how to convince you,” he said, breaking down crying, “that I don't remember her, and I've had many people dislike me before...”

My thoughts interrupted him. Yeah, you don't say...

“...But no one had acted toward me quite like this. You think she's scared? I'm scared, too, man. This is one day I will never be able to get out of my mind.”

After what I felt was an eternity of silence, I said, “I was never able to get YOU out of my mind, and now that this just happened, guess what, Adam Sherman, I never will.”

Dr. Campbell said, “If you don't know her, how can you explain that she knows your first and last name?”

The bully just gave up the crock and ran away from the restaurant as if he'd seen a cop at one of the corners of the restaurant, and he was a fugitive. His car disappeared from that parking lot in less than two minutes.

* * *


	9. Undone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How much more can Vanessa take?

After several minutes of confusion, everything got back to normal in that Burger King that would be engraved in my mind for more reasons than one. Dad, Dr. Campbell, Emmanuel and I were able to have a lengthy discussion about the direct messages I'd received in my twitter account when I hadn't been able to read them myself, and Dr. Campbell told us to be very wary about the newest direct messages, that to him it felt like these enemies of ours were getting too close for comfort, closer and closer every day, actually, and that for now, the best thing that I could do was to deactivate my twitter.

I said, “But Adam Lambert's following me on there just to keep informed about Mom's condition.”

Dr. Campbell said, “I can reach out to him on my twitter account and prove to him that we are directly linked to the Lieberman family, but we have to stay off the radar of this crazed woman and her cohorts. I can feel them closing in, and if you have your phone number set for a password reset should you lose access to your account, it'll be even easier for them to track you down.”

I said, “I never use my phone number for password resets of any of my internet accounts, just email addresses, all goofy, by the way, so to speak, as in not formal, and I've never used my real name online, either, or pinpointed to my real location when posting to Facebook or Twitter. Dad always warned me against that, and he also warned me against posting anything on the internet, and that if I wanted to keep track of my favorite celebrities, to just follow them on Twitter and read their tweets to know what they're up to without tweeting anything, but I didn't listen, and now look what's happening.”

Emmanuel said, “Dad and I promise to keep in touch with Adam Lambert for you if it means so much to you. I know why this is so important to you, because Adam's the one celebrity that's gotten as close to you as no other celebrity will ever get. Because he's shown genuine concern for Mrs. Lieberman and he's willing to do anything he can to help her. But I'm sure Adam Lambert cares about you too, so much that deep down, what he'd want you to do is the same thing my dad's suggesting. I'm sure your mom would want the same thing, as well.”

I said, “My mom can't know. Finding out about this would kill her, knowing that her only daughter is in danger, and then my baby brother or sister will die, too.”

Dr. Campbell said, “They have free wifi here. Go on and take this chance to deactivate your account. Don't say goodbye. Just press those few buttons and get rid of it. You can always create a new twitter when we all think the coast is clear, but when you do so, refrain from uploading your real picture and using it as a profile picture.”

I said, “You're suggesting I should live like a fugitive, basically, until this woman's obsession with me wanes? I don't think that's ever gonna happen, Dr. Campbell.”

Dr. Campbell said, “She's not the only reason for you to take actions that you see as so drastic. Just go back to the time in which you got connected to the internet for the first time and discovered social media for the first time and just be an onlooker, what they call a 'lurker'.”

I smiled. “Oh, you know about all of that, even about all of our strange terminology, all those words we've made up on the internet and now use regularly.”

Emmanuel said, “Of course. He hears that from his youngest patients all the time, so he ought to do some research about it, right, to see why people talk like this today, because youngsters didn't talk like this when Dad was a teenager, did they, Dad?”

Dr. Campbell said, “No, most of us didn't talk like that in the early eighties, no.”

I asked, “You were a teenager in the early eighties, Dr. Campbell? You look my dad's age! My dad's in his early thirties right now!”

Dad said, “It's okay, Vanessa. I mean we're getting to know one another so I have no reservation in telling Dr. Campbell my age. I'm thirty.”

Emmanuel said, “Wow, that's young, Mr. Lieberman.”

Dr. Campbell grinned. “I'm forty-six.”

I gasped and put my hand in my chest. “Did you ever have any work done?”

Emmanuel burst out laughing, but out of fear at his dad's reaction. It was a different laugh, not like he found this funny, but more like a nervous laugh, like saying 'Oh, my God, what's gonna happen now?'

To my relief, Dr. Campbell didn't seem offended at all from the way he opened up another smile. “That's so nice of you to say, Vanessa, thank you! No, I haven't gotten any work done, and I'm flattered that I seem like I did.”

I just smiled, not knowing what else to say. I wanted to say that he looked more like my dad's age, but now the person I was afraid of offending and embarrassing was my dad. I let my head down for a few seconds, picked up one of my few French flies that were left, and ate it.

Dad got up and handed Dr. Campbell his contact card, saying, “Adam, I wish I could stay a while longer, but I can't. I have a computer repair arranged for tonight.” He looked at his phone's clock. “Scheduled tonight at nine, it's nine thirty, and my customer's messaging me like crazy, thinking I stood her up, and when I get finished with that I have to pack up a few clothes to take to my wife at the hospital. Turns out she's not coming home any time soon. She needs more comprehensive care than what we can provide. She's the nurse. We're not.”

Dr. Campbell said, “All because of this madwoman, huh?”

Dad sighed with pain in his chest. I could tell that's what he was feeling now and any time he talked about Mom at random. “You got it.”

Dr. Campbell said, “She's the kind of crazy who will drive anyone crazy, and I've witnessed more than enough madness for tonight, so, if Mrs. Lieberman ever needs my help...”

I said, “We hope she never will, but thank you for being so kind and also being willing to help.”

Dr. Campbell said, “Don't be surprised if people that seem unlikely to reach out, if they do. I think anyone that anyone that still has a conscience and a heart would want to help someone in your wife's situation without thinking twice. I hope she gets better, and if you need any financial assistance for her treatment, you can count on that, too. I feel sympathetic because my identical-twin brother died of complications associated with cerebral palsy when we were twenty-nine years old, and my mother's deceased and my father refused to take care of him. He was my one and only sibling and we were closer than most twins are, so...”

Dad commented, “You and my wife would make friends in an instant because she also lost her sister when she was much younger. Her sister would've been two years younger than you if she were alive today. Unlike your brother, who died of natural causes, my sister-in-law was driven to a slow, painful death. I'll give you the details eventually. Just be warned that the Lieberman family has painful secrets that we don't usually discuss with anyone outside the family, and some of those secrets, even our family members don't know about.”

Dr. Campbell said, “Fret not. Our family is not very different from yours.”

 

* * *

 

Even though Emmanuel assured me that he'd try to prove his connection to me, to Adam Lambert, I still couldn't get over having had to deactivate a twitter account that I'd had for four years. All of this was so unfair. This woman who went by the name of Summer Rothstein was forcing us to live our lives like we were a family of serial killers on the run from the law, and not like who we really were, my mom, my Dad, and I—listen, they were citizens who'd never committed even a minor crime, and I was—I admit—a reformed criminal, and none of this made sense because I'd committed petty crimes, but I had no reason to be a fugitive. Luckily for me, if I had done something really horrible, it wouldn't had been blocked from my mind to the point where I would only know if I were told. I didn't remember most of the things that I did, but I know the things I never did, and I knew for a fact that I'd never done anything that made me worthy of living my life like I was an expatriate, a reject of society. That was the way that Summer Rothstein was making me feel and my whole family. Now, we couldn't have accounts on social media, none of us, for fear that Summer's bored but sick friends would track us down to do horrible things to us out of solidarity with Summer. That night, I even started having horrible, vivid nightmares of Summer and my idol, Adam Lambert, walking around our area together, killing my entire family, and what made it even worse was that in my dream, Summer and Adam weren't crazed zombies running around, killing anyone they encountered. These two actually knew too well what the hell they were doing, and they were enjoying it, too, killing my loved ones one by one and making me watch, except I wasn't in the dream physically. I could see myself nowhere in these nightmares. It was like watching a horror movie in which all of my loved ones were being slaughtered like pigs. I went on like that for the next fifteen nights, and it got so horrible that I could no longer keep my incredible and incalculable mental anguish secret. During one of the nightmares, I screamed as loud as I could. I didn't hear myself screaming. I thought that this was one of those dreams in which my mouth hung agape, but no sound was coming from it. It turns out that even my neighbors had heard my screams that night.

Now, instead of just my dad coming into my room to try to console me, even the cops were showing up at our door, thinking that someone in the house had been murdered for real, but my dad and I explained to them that I screamed because I was having nightmares too vivid and intense, so much so that half the time I just couldn't tell if it was just a nightmare or if this was really happening. One of the cops said they'd arrived here because a neighbor had called out of genuine concern for us. After a brief conversation, the cops left.

 

It was four o'clock in the morning now, but I felt Dad and I just had to talk about this. I said, “Dad, I'm scared.” 

He could tell I was still quivering. “Me, too, Vanessa. I never believed in the supernatural or in the paranormal, but considering what's been happening these past few months, I am starting to because too many horrible things are happening to us that defy reality and common sense, and it's not what they call collective madness, you know, a madness that everyone within the same family shares, like a home network, inescapable kind of craziness. This is real, too real for me. It happened right in front of Dr. Campbell and Emmanuel, and right in front of everyone at the restaurant. I was shocked when Mrs. Kalember told me that she saw me on the news. What happened to us at Burger King appeared on the news because a few people that were there contacted our local news about it and the next thing I knew, it spread as one of those random but unbelievable moments. Yes, Adam Sherman must be really proud to have been on TV. Yea!”

“Adam Sherman has been talking smack about us around town. He thinks we're too blame for what happened because what happened between him and I in the past wasn't big enough a deal for me to per his words, 'cry wolf' about it.”

“Sherman is a sicko. He might not be a 'Hannibal Lecter' kind of sicko, but he certainly isn't okay in the head. He gets a kick out of other people's pain. That is one bully that never grew up.”

“...And never will. Have you any idea of the nightmares I've been having? Dad, I dreamed that Summer Rothstein located us because Adam Sherman told her where we were, and my latest nightmare was about her manipulating Adam Lambert somehow into killing our entire family! Dad, he was laughing his ass off in my face while slitting your throat and strangling Mom!”

Dad's cup of coffee fell on to his lap without him realizing it had. It didn't burn his thighs or crotch because it was cold. He'd made it two hours before, forgotten it at the table, and now he was drinking it after it'd been cold. “You can't be serious.”

Crying, I said, “I am, and I know it's all a product of my imagination because Adam Sherman wouldn't care enough about this whole bullshit to find my worst enemy, contact her, and tell her where I am so she can come here and kill me, and it'd be even less likely for Adam Lambert to kill anyone, especially us, I mean he's too chicken to kill anyone no matter how angry he is at that other person.”

“Adam gave me Lambert's basic profile, and he said that Lambert is the kind of person to point a gun at you, pull on the trigger, but not letting the bullet out for pure fear of going to jail. He'd get uncontrollably livid at you and actually threaten you, but in the moment of truth, he wouldn't just get on with it and do it. He'd put the gun down and run away screaming out for his Mommy, so no, Adam Lambert wouldn't kill us or even his worst enemy, but the fact is that nightmares are nothing but manifestations of your very worst fears and this has gotten to you so bad that you're losing your mind over this whole thing. You need professional help, Vanessa. I've had nightmares, but it's just because that is something that happens to everyone, but none of my nightmares are related to Summer Rothstein.”

“Oh, my God...”

“Don't worry, Vanessa. I'm going to see about getting you some counseling. This is what happens to people when they go through traumatic experiences and they don't get help.”

* * *

Over the next few weeks, I got some serious counseling. Then, I underwent a profound psychological evaluation and it was determined that I suffered from severe depression, so severe that it was impeding me from doing both the things I loved to do, and even worse, the things I had to do. I had developed another mental illness, but in order to get an accurate diagnosis, I needed to undergo further testing. I was told that this would take a while, but Dad didn't want to have me committed, so he told my psychologist, Dr. Ross, that he wanted me to stay home and he swore to take full responsibility should anything go wrong, but he was advised to observe my behavior very closely and meticulously and write down what he saw that was out of character for me. Of course, Dad enlisted Dr. Campbell's help in this. Dr. Campbell couldn't be my psychiatrist, but he could help Dad assess any bizarre behaviors that my dad noticed in me and that information would help my doctors in turn. I was lucky that my boyfriend's dad was a psychiatrist. I never thought I would think like this because that didn't set a good precedent by any means, considering the circumstances, but if I couldn't count on the assistance of a psychiatrist, the road to my recovery would be so much more difficult to walk.

My mom was in a rehabilitation center thirty miles away from us completely oblivious to what was going on, but her doctors and therapists kept my dad informed about her progress. On the bright side, she was regaining the ability to do the things she no longer could do after the stroke, faster than most patients did. Every now and again, they said, there was that patient that was so amazing and so strong that the process of recovery seemed much easier than we all knew it really was. On the downside, though, one of the most devastating side effects of the stroke—in my opinion—the most devastating side effect that stroke victims could ever experience, was neurosis. That's right. As a result of the stroke, Mom had become neurotic, according to her doctors. I just had to go to the local library with my iPad in hand and do some extensive research on the condition.

Of all of the information I learned then, what I believed was the most important thing was the fact that neurosis wasn't a mental illness, but, like its name implied, a neurological one, so if my mom freaked out way too much about anything and couldn't handle that certain problem, it was because of a glitch in her brain, something that she couldn't control, but that her mind was still sound, and to me that was a tremendous relief knowing that. There were several things though, that I found out during my conduction of research, that I hated knowing—how neurotic people got made fun of and looked down upon all the time, every bit as much, if not even more sometimes, than mentally-ill people. I learned that many times, when someone did something that someone else considered bizarre or when they overreacted about something, that second person would get called 'neurotic', and in a very, very negative and demeaning way. I decided then that I just had to keep this secret from everyone in town, that I had to make it so that only our family knew about this, and no one else. My mom's life had changed forever, and the only people that she could really count on to be right next to her when she needed someone, were Dad and I. Just when I thought this couldn't possibly get worse, it just did.

* * *


	10. Our Idol's Good Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam proves just what a golden heart he has.

I logged on to my incognito Twitter account, one in which I wasn't using my real name and that I only used to follow celebrities. I got connected with a Glambert that had just created her Twitter account, but that had a narrower connection to Adam because she was one of those fans that had met him several times. She was in her mid sixties and she'd just been introduced, according to what she explained to me, to social networking. The dozens of pictures she'd taken with Adam Lambert and Tommy Joe Ratliff, along with other band members, had been taken with a digital camera on which every picture and video was date and time-stamped, and not with a smartphone. She had all of those pictures scanned into her computer and now, she kept them as files on a blank, recordable DVD. I explained to her why it was so important to me to reach out to Adam, explained to her my situation through direct messaging, and she promised me that she would give my messages to him. I told her that I knew for sure not to expect a rapid response, and that a response from him could take months or even years to arrive. When I told her that she didn't send me messages for the next several minutes, so it was notable that she was shocked. I had lied about everything but my age and my gender when I created my incognito Twitter account, though. When creating a fake profile online, those were the last two aspects my friends advised me to lie about. Lying about something as simple as your gender could get you mocked and talked trash about online forever. Lying about your age online could attract perverts and sex offenders to you. But this fan was the only person that I gave my real name to.

When the fan talked to me again, she showed me a screencap of her direct messages to prove to me that she'd deleted our entire conversation, and just to protect herself from acts of reprisal from this psychotic and sociopath woman, Summer Rothstein, she changed her twitter handle, too, and replaced her picture with Adam on her profile with a picture of Adam himself, one of the newest ones, from one of the concerts of the 'Queen + Adam Lambert 2014' tour. Instead of waiting for a response from Adam, although she had stolen a few minutes of his time and showed him all the messages that she and I had exchanged, I just forgot that we'd ever kept such close communication with him, turned off my iPad before leaving the library, and went on with my life, leaving the incognito account active, though, just because it was kinda dumb, in my opinion, to create an account on social media, or an email account, use it once, and then knowingly not using it ever again, unless some crap happened in your life that disconnected you from the internet altogether and you just couldn't sign back in, but that wasn't the case. Every now and then, I'd escape to the library to use the internet for research purposes, avoiding social media and email altogether, like such mediums of communication didn't exist at all. To keep what I thought of as my darkest secret of the moment, I'd keep my notes hidden, notes of my studying random things that had nothing to do with academics and school but that still interested me, hidden in a bag, and then I would borrow three or four novels every time I went to the library. When I was finished reading each novel, I'd write its name and author down in a list I was keeping, a list of books to buy in the future, and then I would return those novels, but something that, in the beginning, I was doing with the sole purpose of keeping a secret from my dad, that I was connected to the world wide web when I'd been barred from connecting to the world wide web at all, later on, it became something I was doing for fun, for genuine enjoyment. All of the novels I was borrowing and reading each of in a matter of days or sometimes a few hours, were New York Times #1 Bestselling novels, and while some of them were badly written and had become bestsellers because they were more wish-fulfillment stories, others were so amazing that I just couldn't put them down. Now that summer break for this year was almost over, I was getting lost in these fictional worlds created by these authors, and I even had a list of favorite authors, something that I'd never had before, because for the last fourteen years, I'd been a casual reader, only reading fiction when it was a class assignment. To me, reading novels and listening to music, the thing that I'd always adored to do, were much better alternatives than getting high, going around committing random and senseless acts of vandalism against unsuspecting complete strangers, or shoplifting.

 

* * *

 

August 15, 2014

 

It was a week since school started, and during recess, two hours before our lunch time, Jessica and I got connected to the internet on her phone's 4G and Jessica logged on into her Twitter account. She didn't have to lie about herself on social media because she wasn't a victim of relentless harassment, luckily for her. Summer Rothstein had sent her a few tweets, but after a few killer comebacks from Jess, Summer got scared and never contacted her again, and she knew it would get a lot worse if she tried to send messages to me through Jess's twitter. Jess didn't even have to block her to get rid of her. She killed her with her wit. I wish I was as smart as Jess. This is why Jess and Emmanuel were such great friends but not quite a love match, because they were too smart for themselves, and ironically for one another. This was the kind of situation in which the opposites attract cliché applied perfectly, so perfectly it made my head spin. Emmanuel was the son of two psychiatrists and Jess worked people's minds like a psychiatrist. Where these people had really come from, I had no idea, but Emmanuel's brains attracted me much more than his looks, so much more that unless he called and I saw his picture on the caller display screen, I forgot what he looked like. I wish I were exaggerating. I would converse with him for hours on end, about anything that came at random to each other's minds.

Jess squealed, making me jolt and look right at her, my mouth a thin line, my eyes bulging out of my sockets. “You'll never guess who sent me direct messages. Your darling Adam!” I didn't know why she didn't just say his last name, since she was known to daydream so much, all day, every day, that as she walked, she would hit her face straight into poles and walls, and one time she hit her face so hard that it made a bruise and Miranda cried and screamed because she thought a couple of mean girls had mauled her. It took Jess days to convince her mother that she had a dumb moment, wasn't watching where she was going, and hit her face on the brick wall too hard, so hard it seemed more like she'd been pushed into that freaking wall. 

Passersby looked right at us, smiling, just because of what a drama queen she was being right now, and when they clearly heard what she'd just said, they thought I had a boyfriend named Adam. There were five boys in the school named Adam. Parents must've thought that was the coolest baby boy name ever, like it had a special meaning or something, like the name Hercules or Spartacus. I only liked the name because it happened to be the first name of my favorite singer in the whole world, someone that I was becoming more and more fascinated with, as childish as this was. But then again I had a legitimate excuse to be starstruck because I was a child. If I were thirty or forty-four instead of fourteen, in the book of my grandparents, that would be legitimate cause of concern. The passerby girls laughed their asses off, and I heard Lindsay say, “About time she had a boyfriend!” laughing with the others. “Practically every girl in this school has a boyfriend or a casual fling, and she's the forever alone girl of the school,” and then looked at me and said to me, taking off my glasses, “Perhaps doing something as simple as this can get you some real action.” She dropped my glasses on the ground and walked away acting as if she'd just had a drink of water at the water fountain and gone on her way. The other girls couldn't stop chattering about and laughing at me.

I was still paralyzed as a mannequin and Jess crouched and picked my glasses up from the floor. She said, “I brought that upon you, me of all people. I am so sorry.”

We started to walk away from that zone, under the clock tower, a place in the school I was beginning to dread now. My personality was changing and I didn't like it. I said, “Don't apologize for being random and hyperactive like you are. If I didn't like it we would've never been friends. People like you are cooler and more appealing to me. Normal people, as in people who just sit there and be normal, and classy, and well-mannered, and that conform to society's standards, are boring, and have no true personalities. Those people are puppets, controlled by society. Bizarre is the norm.”

Jess said, “That's a beautiful sentiment. Most people that know me have no idea that behind this total nerd, there's also this total dork who's jumping and running all over the place like a crazy, and I'm not ashamed of it. But listen, you know me and you love me for me, so let's talk about something even more important and forget about the random, but unfiltered comment you just made, OK? Adam, your darling, sent me new DM's. It seems that he has trouble believing,” she said, reading the DM's from her screen and putting them in her own words because she didn't want people to know we had casual but close interaction with a celebrity, for real, “that the person that contacted his best friend is indeed this third party involved. He says that it's not hard to mimic someone else when one knows the person they're mimicking a little too well, better than the other person would like to be known by anyone.” She giggled and said, “Gosh, I sound more like a psychologist.”

I blurted out, “And you work people like one, too.”

She burst out laughing. “My little idiot,” she said, putting her free arm around me. Then she continued talking about the new DM's. “He says that he needs irrefutable proof that you are the one trying to reach out to him.”

“Would he want me to Skype with him or something?”

“That's what I was thinking. Although he didn't go into the details of how we could prove that we were telling the truth, I was thinking that you could show them the messages you exchanged with the mediator or middle person during that Skype chat.”

“Lately I've been making screencaps of and printing out all of my DM's and all of the DM's related to me, something that two or three people in the whole world do. Question now is how to arrange this.”

“Tell your dad that you need me to help you with your math homework. You're in advanced classes and you're taking algebra, a brand-new course, and you need someone who's good in math, and who is in advanced courses, like me, to help you to understand it.”

“Yeah, I'd always been great in math, but the instant they put letters and numbers together in this course named pre-algebra...” I rolled my eyes, and felt a headache coming on just thinking about it. “Oh, God, do you have any idea how I had to work my ass off just to get a low-average B? Jeez!”

“My point exactly,” Jess said. “We can talk about algebra just to get it out of the way, and then when your dad is one hour away from picking you up and driving you back home, we can tweet Adam a video showing him all of the paperwork, the DM's—everything. We'd just leave this alone, but he's become way too invested in this situation with Katie, and if we just leave him hanging and forget about the whole thing, he'll believe we've been taking him for granted all the time, and possibly go on to thinking that we plainly lied to him about everything, and he won't be so kind and sweet to other people anymore. He'll have an incredibly hard time trusting people from here on out.”

“Wow,” I said, “I never thought of this in this way.”

 

* * *

 

Jessica and I worked on algebra for several hours. She was just helping me to understand the whole concept of algebra, hoping that in the future I'll understand my textbook and my teacher's lessons better, and perhaps ace the course at the end of the year rather than just barely passing it. My parents weren't used to me not having straight A's, so I really had to work my ass off on this one. Then, Jessica and I made a video to send it to Adam for him to see when he had a few minutes of free time. We made sure to show him all of the direct messages we'd ever written to him or about him. Summer Rothstein had instilled in all of us the custom of printing out pretty much everything we did online at all that was directly related to Adam Lambert anyway, so since we'd been doing this for a while now, we no longer found it bizarre or unusual. Jess and Emmanuel convinced me to have patience and said that if Adam refused to let this go and move on with his life as if nothing had happened in that night in the month of May 2014, it was because he was trying to help us to get Summer out of our lives, not only from the lives of my family, but from his life as well, because Adam was keeping from us everything that she was putting him through. He knew that we cared a thousand times more about him than he could ever care about us, and that if Summer had never started in on us, perhaps by the second time we'd ever met him in person, he wouldn't have even remembered our faces unless we started giving him the details of what happened on that night that he met us for the first time. Summer was a walking curse. Everything she touched would get destroyed, just completely obliterated, but it was a very slow process. People around her wouldn't just die. They'd be tortured for months or years and then they would give out, their bodies and minds unable to take any more physical or mental abuse.

Adam was in New Zealand with Queen by the time any of us had direct communication with him again. It was September 4, 2014, and at around seven o'clock at night, where we lived, in New York, when Jessica logged on to her Twitter and found so many new direct messages from Adam, just the amount of them made her head spin. He'd written the equivalent of words written in one's average manuscript, and when we printed everything out, the document came out to be twenty pages long, but Miranda, Jessica and I took our sweet time reading everything. What he meant to do was to write a heartfelt letters to all of us, and judging from the dates, all of the messages weren't written in one day. It took him weeks to write all of that, but every message that we read moved us more and more. He didn't think we'd been lying. He didn't think we were taking him for granted, or that we had done this solely to be able to get in touch with him directly much more easily. Apparently, he'd gotten more in-depth information about my mom while we weren't watching, that he didn't tell us about word for word because the way he talked about my mom was so beautiful. At first he gave us links to different websites from hospitals and rehabilitation facilities that helped victims of neurological conditions with their recovery. He shocked us with the physical address of the headquarters of a bank where apparently, there was a fund dedicated to my mom's cause, money to help us pay for my mom's treatment.

When my dad went to that bank, twenty miles away from where we lived, and Dad gave the bank teller the details of this account, the teller told Dad that there were six thousand dollars in there, money that had come from Adam's pockets. Now we were wondering who was keeping in touch with Adam and giving him much more information than we could give him, and most important of all, how this person could keep communication open with him, sharing details we could've never shared out of fear, while staying off of the radar of Summer Rothstein.

That day, Dad and his new best friend and confidante, Dr. Campbell, sat in Dr. Campbell's dining room together and tried to come up with various different ways as to how this could've happened, while I was in the kitchen, making me a mug of coffee. Emmanuel and I tried to stay in plain sight of them just so they wouldn't think we were doing something we weren't supposed to. Dad talked to Dr. Campbell about his lifelong best friends, Miranda, born Miranda Sullivan, and Fernando Aguilera. It took Dr. Campbell less than five minutes to conclude that if we still didn't have internet connectivity in our house, that only two other people that knew my mom better than she knew herself, Miranda or Fernando, or both of them at the same time, could've been contacting Adam incognito and sharing with them photos of my mom, old photos, from before the stroke, photos from after the stroke, and photos from the present day. We were getting help from the most unlikely source.

* * *


	11. Is This Really Adam?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Aguilera and Lieberman families start questioning whether it is indeed Adam Lambert doing these nice things for them because his kindness is greater than that any other celebrity would show toward his or her fans.

Adam sent a new DM to Jessica's account. When Jessica showed me the screencap she'd taken from her phone, I couldn't believe it the next day. Adam was inviting the entire family to his next show in the US, which it was too early to know still if his show would be solo or with Queen, but either way, he wanted to see us again, and this time he wanted to see Jessica, Miranda, Fernando, Emmanuel, and Dr. Campbell also. He promised to get us tickets to his own next show and mail them to us.

Jessica had written him back that after all he'd done for my mom, she couldn't believe that he was also sending us all tickets to his next show. Jessica wrote him back what I wanted to write to him, but I couldn't find the right words to express that particular thought. Jessica was known for telling people exactly what she thought. If she thought you were an imbecile, that was exactly what she'd tell you. That was the reason why she had such few friends, I being one of them, because she didn't suck up to other people and she certainly didn't keep her mouth shut. Jessica lost many friends over the years because of it, but then again, if she had cared, she would've indeed kept her mouth shut tight. Miranda had taught her to speak her mind at all times, no matter what, but that sometimes one had to choose their words carefully, depending on who one was talking to. For Jessica Aguilera, only figures of authority deserved it for her to think twice about her words before saying them out loud. Anyone who wasn't a police officer, the President, her parents or any of her teachers, that she didn't like, could kiss her ass. I wished I were so ballsy, but then again, I was exactly like her in that regard when I was running around doing all the wrong things back in the day, but that event in my life that changed it completely that I was still keeping secret from everyone, even from my mom, it had changed more than my life. It had also changed certain aspects of my personality. I was no longer outspoken, and now, my mouth had a filter. I no longer felt like I had the freedom to say what I wanted to say every single time. For me to have that feeling I'd have to be talking to someone I'd known since I was a tiny child, or for all my life. I no longer opened up to my friends or new friends I'd just made. Contrary to most people, also, I was even more restrained when I was online, with what I wanted to say. I had that constant fear that someone that I was interacting with online would either Google me and come after me to get his or her revenge after I'd said the wrong thing, or that someone would kill him or herself after reading something I'd just said. For that reason, all that I would do on Facebook and Twitter was to follow and 'friend' people and read what they had to say. When I tweeted out that photo of us with Adam Lambert, it had been my one and only tweet that hadn't been sent directly to my best friends at school that happened to be following me on Twitter also. All of my activity online, save for my research done for my school work and homework, was secretive, because my parents were afraid that I would kill myself because of something that someone might've said to me online, and even though that wasn't true, because no one knew me online well enough to say anything about me at all, I stopped interacting with people secretly online altogether. Everything I'd heard about Adam Lambert, I'd heard it because of Jessica and Emmanuel, because they'd pass on to me his messages when he'd send them. 

Jessica showed me a tweet from one of those fans that everybody followed because they would tweet out Adam's latest pictures and videos, saying that one should never aspire to become Adam's best friend all of a sudden just by meeting him in person ten or more times, so Adam's kindness toward my entire family surprised me even more. I could've suspected that someone was 'catfishing' us by pretending to be Adam Lambert and exchanging direct messages with us because someone could've been hacking Adam's account and doing that—one of those hackers that could intrude anyone's anything online—but that was impossible because if it were a catfish, they would be asking us for money instead of sending us money, so if I had been my mom, instead of me, and if I had been in the condition she was in now, I would've just thought I was trapped in a delusion or in an eternal lucid dream.

But even though I now had a mental illness, I had to accept it as reality, because it was real. These messages weren't being sent to my own twitter account because I no longer had one. My friends and family members, and my friend's family members were getting involved. Everyone that had ever received direct communication with Adam Lambert that was linked to us was involved now, and people were coming to me, showing me these messages. Incredibly, Miranda, Jessica and Emmanuel weren't annoyed any of the times they had something from Adam to show me. Every single time, they were elated to hear from him and more than eager to show me his messages, because some of them were directed right at me, and every time I saw my name in one of the messages, my heart melted even more. What a teddy bear of a person Adam turned out to be! Was he even real anymore? I mean I knew celebs like Katy Perry or Lady Gaga donating millions of dollars from their incalculable fortunes to different causes, but this was up close and personal and went far beyond donating. Adam had a special interest in my mom, an interest that I now realized had been born from the very moment he met my mother, days before she fell ill. It wasn't like she fell ill and out of compassion he decided to keep in touch with her to see how she was doing and what he could do for her. Adam was treating my mom like she was his family member, too, my mom and our whole family. Could they be relatives? Could my grandmother or grandfather had been friends at one point in their lives with any of Adam's four grandparents that we knew so far were still alive? I couldn't dismiss this crazy idea because Fernando Aguilera, Jessica's father, had grown up in Indianapolis and moved here to New York when he was ten. Then he met Miranda, fell in love with her and my best friend and only friend since I was a baby, Jessica, was born. Jessica and I were so close that we thought of one another more as sisters than as friends. When one grew up with a friend, one didn't have to be related by blood to consider that friend a true sister or brother, especially when Jessica and I had loved one another so much all these years, and we still did. Jessica was becoming more like my idol, just because she still dared to have the guts to say and do what she wanted and remain unapologetic about it, like I confess I no longer did.

That could explain why Adam felt so responsible about what happened to my mom, so guilty that he wished he had never met her just to have kept this from happening. He had more than enough money to pay for my mother's medical bills and follow up with her treatment, but he'd been asked behind the scenes not to go this far because my mom would need thousands upon thousands of dollars for her treatments, and they weren't about to take advantage of him like that because he wasn't to be responsible for the deeds of a woman who was completely out of her mind. One traditional moral and value that open-minded Fernando and Miranda still held dear was the fact that when one did something wrong, that was the one and only person to hold responsible for the aftermath of that deed, no matter how many bystanders there were at the moment the evil deed took place. Miranda and Fernando allowed Jessica to go out with our friends and go over to their houses, but she had to come back home at eight o'clock, and as she got older, her parents decided to push the curfew one hour later until at age seventeen, she'd have no curfew at all. But my parents were even more traditional. That I would fall in love, give in to my boyfriend and get pregnant, that wasn't what they feared. My past was the reason for their fears that were centered upon me. They feared that I would go back to doing drugs, drinking, and committing petty crimes if they 'let me loose', like they called it. I was only fourteen. In my mind, they didn't know me that well. In my opinion, for them to say that they knew me well, I'd have to be old enough to have given them grandchildren. If I experienced metamorphosis of my very personality at age ten, and then complete transformation again at age twelve, I could always experience it again, and although I didn't want to change, I was aware of that fact. Life experiences turned people into totally-different persons from who they used to be.

Jessica had earned the freedom she had because the worst thing she'd done so far that no sane parent condoned from their child was to lower her grades from A's to F's and to be mouthy and defiant in class. She'd seen what I went through and as a result, she just didn't dare to go any further than that. Jessica had had boyfriends in the past, but it hadn't gone beyond first base with her. She was aware that her parents wouldn't be willing to help her take care of the baby, and that she wasn't about to be, in her opinion, 'wasting her parents' money' on condoms and birth-control treatments, when according to her words, abstinence, even though it was a method much harder to employ when it came to preventing all those things she just didn't want to have to deal with, was free. There was no money to be wasted when one just kept their legs and their pants closed up tight. Jessica wanted to still get to be a child. In her opinion, when she would turn eighteen, she would buy her own contraceptive methods and indulge in the things that she wanted to do that she was now holding back from doing. So far it wasn't in her plans to do drugs, and I hoped that she never would, because if I didn't get raped while I was under the influence of the drugs that I was doing, it wasn't because I was unattractive, as I'd proven to be so far--because Emmanuel Campbell was the only guy in the world that had shown genuine romantic interest in me—it was because my fellow drug-addict former friends had the compassion to keep me protected from perverts while they went ahead and did everything that I wasn't doing. They didn't care enough about me to protect me, but they weren't heartless enough to let their perverted boyfriends and girlfriends have their way with me, either. I thought that they must've realized that there was a radical difference between irresponsible, but consented sexual behavior, and rape. Rape was definitely where those people drew the line. They must've been rape victims and perhaps they didn't want me to go through the same hell they did in being violated. Luckily for me, there wasn't the double-whammy that they were grown men and women. They were teenagers, younger than eighteen, just like me.

I couldn't wait for the time to arrive when we'd get to see Adam backstage after his next concert in the US. I wanted to take a few minutes of his time, just a few minutes, not much, to ask him why the incredible interest in my family's tragedy beyond the interest that a performer would show if a fan got injured at one of his or her shows or after one of his shows. He had a whole legal team that handled this precarious situation for any performer, and yet he still took very-special interest in my mother. I wanted to ask him if someone in his family had been friends with someone in my family. I canceled out the possibility that we could be directly related to the Lambert or the Mitchel families when I went back to the local library and conducted an investigation online through ancestry.com, money that I'd put in a prepaid credit card, money that I'd saved from allowances I'd gotten in the past to buy items at the school cafeteria that weren't offered with the standard school lunch—things like potato chips or Doritos, Minute-Maid juices, or tacos. I'd been saving that money for years and I'd just spent the last twenty-something dollars on it on this membership with ancestry.com for my special investigation. No one in the Lieberman family of our town was connected by blood to anyone of surname Lambert or Mitchel, that shared the first names of anyone in Adam's family, so if we weren't distant relatives, someone from his family must've been a good friend to someone from our family, very far back. I just had to know for sure because this was bizarre to me. I wasn't suspicious of Adam's treatment to my family. If he meant any harm, he would've hurt us instead of helping us. I'd heard that when Adam Lambert disliked someone or hated someone, he'd just cut him or her from his life completely. He'd said this, and since he was a celebrity, I had no choice but to take his word for everything because after all, I wasn't remotely close to him enough to confirm he was telling the truth or that he was lying, and when he pronounced every word he seemed so sincere that he seemed like he was unfiltered, just opening up to strangers, letting them in on aspects of his personality that one couldn't get to know unless he chose to share them with people. It seemed that he didn't care because that we'd seen for the last five years, the things he kept private I could literally count with my fingers. I don't know why he'd chosen to be this transparent. It was one thing to not be a hypocrite, but being an open book to fans and anyone watching was a whole other ballgame, and he'd been like this years before he became famous. That's how everyone found out he was gay when he was on Idol, solely because photos of him that he'd uploaded to a social-media account from way back in the day, had been leaked online, but rather than seeing it as the most terrible thing that had happened to him, he took on this 'Yes, it's me in the pictures, so what?' attitude, rather than freaking out and saying the man in the photos was a random exact look alike of his, something that wasn't very far fetched because I'd read online that each human being had seven exact look-alikes in various parts of the world so far away that it was unlikely one could meet even one of them.

I finally had the balls to reply to Adam's message and thank him for everything he was doing and for caring so much about my mom, that I was making sure that my mom was getting every single message he was sending, and that she couldn't have been more elated and touched by his kindness toward her. Like I said I wanted to ask him what this was due to, but out of fear of offending him, I refrained from doing that.

I expected to not hear from Adam until it was time for us to meet face to face again. But next time I heard about him, he was different. As if a totally different person had messaged Jessica. The message read, two months later. You fucking piece of shit. Did you really think I gave a damn about you or your mother? Fuck you. I want my money back.

I said nothing. Dad worked overtime, knowing we'd had enough time because he didn't give us a deadline, and within three months, Dad had reunited the $6,000. When he sent it to the account Adam had initially transferred it to for Adam to collect, having left the teller specific instructions to please make sure the money would wind up right back into Adam's bank accounts, any of them, less than thirty minutes later, Dad got a phone call from the bank. 

“Sir,” the bank teller said, “We contacted Mr. Lambert and he said he's hurt—you know how dramatic he is, something I'm not mocking him for because that makes him as amazing as he is—but yes, he says he doesn't understand why you're basically rejecting the money he gave you, that it was a gift, and that he thought that since you were older than him, you understood, even better than he did himself, what a gift was.”

Dad asked, “Do you have a work email or a work social-media account that I can contact you at to send you a message he left to my goddaughter's twitter account?”

“Wow, so your communication with him has been kept cybernetic. Sure, I have a 'work twitter. I'll be waiting for the screencap. Oh, boy, this gets more and more interesting every minute that passes, doesn't it? This is my strangest day yet, and I'm twenty-eight years old. All right...” 

Dad wrote down the twitter account. He'd had the woman on speakerphone so I could listen in and understand what the hell was going on, since my adoration for Adam was the reason that my family was going through all this. He wasn't trying to make me feel guilty for being the fan of—insert superstar name here—but he wanted me to get to know my idol better, his so-called dark side and his so-called sweet side. The random flashback I had of his music video of the same theme made me change my view of said music video. It made it more like a scene of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Wes-Craven style. I was gonna have horrible nightmares tonight.

That day, nine hours later, when it was about to come to a close, both Adam and the bank teller, Stella Windham, got back to us—with a vengeance.

Adam started ranting to Dad—via Skype, on a special account Dad had made that he was using from Fernando's house, and Jessica and I were biting our nails watching this go down. “Motherfucker, if I had known she was this sick, I would've made sure to have her committed! I have irrefutable evidence she hacked my fucking Twitter! Goddamn it, that fucking sociopath straight from the pits of a hypothetical hell is hell bent on destroying all of us! How much farther is she willing to go? What does she want? She's playing with the lives of innocent people here out of a sick thrill, and this has got to stop. This is going to stop! Now! I can't count how many people hacked into my twitter, but all they do is to tweet out shitty spam tweets to my Glamberts! They don't mess with handicapped people over the DM's! You know what, Robert? Thanks for being honest and being a guy I could look up to, and sending me my money back. You just don't see it every day for someone to work their ass off to return $6,000, much less to a celebrity who's given or loaned money out of pure good faith. That money, that was the first fund that came straight from my pockets, because I wanted to comply with a serious responsibility I have. I didn't want this to get much nastier than it got when Katie fell ill, but the reason why I've gone out of my way is because I know I pissed off a crazy bitch online. She's on to all of us because I pissed her off. She started shit with you guys because she was one bored homophobic brood, but when she started this vendetta, she meant business, because I pissed on her Wheaties, so now I have to make sure that everyone's okay here, and that no one suffers because of my reckless action, but I'm gonna tell you this. I'm achieving my goal halfway through because I've been keeping you protected, you know, I've been acting as a shield and taking all the blows, but she knew that a way to get back to you guys was to bypass my Twitter, and shit just got serious, I'm not someone one wants to fuck with. Yeah, I'm about to do something I'd never done. I'm about to take reprisal against someone, because she's using me to hurt innocent people, and I will be damned before I look like a heartless asshole to millions of people. I could be accused of being a pervert just for putting on a show. I can be accused of being narcissistic, of being mean to innocent fans from time to time. I'm thirty-three now. People have more than enough time to get it straight when it comes to how I treat my fans, but you know what? It's gonna be the end of me to be seen as a sadist who targets innocent people. I will not—you know, you guys, I'm gonna be doing some serious shit backstage. I'm gonna start by deactivating my twitter. Yes, I don't care about my 3 million followers 'cause I know about one million of them are fake or inactive accounts, just like every celebrity twitter, you know, with a rate of about sixty percent of their followers being fake or inactive accounts, but yes, I skyped you because I deactivated my twitter. I already did, and I heard about the outcry on eNews, too. Oh, yeah, I just had an interview with them today about my newest album and that's the first thing they asked me about—bam—they said why I closed my twitter if I didn't seem to have exchanged hateful tweets with anyone, and I said--”

I said, “Excuse me, Adam,” shaking, “I saw and recorded said interview on my DVD recorder, because when we canceled our internet service we had to cancel the whole bundle and get basic satellite TV-service, you know, just TV with all the channels, but no internet, phone, cell phone or any of that—just because of this crazy...” I had to take some time to regain my breath. “You gave a short and sweet answer which was something along the lines of looking outside the box or...”

He said, “I said that what happened to me happened 'backstage', that it wasn't something the twitter fans could've gotten to see. They got a hint, but I left it up to them to investigate. I didn't render details.”

“I guess,” Dad said, “all we can do now is hang tight to see what's gonna happen next because Summer's gonna try to reactivate your twitter and try to do as much damage to your reputation as possible...”

Adam said, “It's gonna take her a while to do that. I got information about that and I heard that it took her and her minions months to hack my twitter, you know, that it wasn't like...”

Jessica chimed, “It wasn't like when I hacked Katie's twitter. I am good at guessing password combinations.”

Adam said to her, “Thanks for the heads up. Hey, Jess, I have an idea. I always hear 'practice makes perfect'. Why don't you try to hack into my twitter to reactivate it?”

“Me?” she asked, her hand on her chest, mouth open.

He said, “Yes, you. I want to make it so it can be proven that I didn't send those grotesque DM's to Robert. I mean you know your father better than anyone. Why don't you guys create a Twitter for Robert and try to start an argument with me? Jessica and I could be on my account at the same time, talking back and forth to Robert. Let's play a game. Let's play Summer's game. I'm thinking why don't we try to show my Glamberts just how hard it is to imitate the way I talk?”

* * *


	12. She Just Won't Stop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The monster named Summer Rothstein rears her ugly head once again, making her victims think she'll never stop.

As of now, Jessica had twenty-seven days to bypass Adam's official Twitter and pretend to be him. Adam knew exactly what he was doing. He knew Jessica was his fan, and that was only because she was supportive of me. She wasn't a big fan of singers that could hit notes so high they could be opera singers like Freddie Mercury and Adam Lambert. She preferred voices 'gentler to the ears' like for instance Sia. Ariana Grande's voice drove her off the wall. She was glad that 'Problem' was no longer her number one hit just because of her third single, because she'd grown so sick of that song that she would leave our local store every time she heard it being played at random, because that was when she realized that 'Problem' was what 'I Kissed A Girl' was back in 2008, the kind of song one couldn't even escape by avoiding one's local radio station. Come to think of it, that's why Ariana annoyed her, because of her smash hit with Iggy Azalea. When she heard Ariana's new single on the radio being played at random by her little cousin, she'd just ignore it. Jessica quickly got annoyed, but she was just as quick at getting sick of being annoyed about something in specific. This girl always had more important things to worry about, like helping to prepare the nursery for her baby sister, who was due to grace us with her presence within the next two weeks. That's right. My baby brother or sister and Jessica's baby sister were gonna be born around the same week or maybe the same day. It seemed to be something straight out of some cheesy chick flick, and yes, it had been that long. When Jessica guessed Adam's password, she didn't dare to get into its settings to find out what the email address was that Adam had used to create the account back in the day or his phone number that he could've used for password changes—it was just forbidden ground, and we didn't dare to betray Adam's complete trust to us.

Jessica started playing the role of superstar Adam Lambert. To test the waters, rather than starting to tweet different people at random that he didn't know and causing a scandal, she sent another hateful message to my Dad pretending to be Adam, and then one DM became sixteen DM's, all of which my Dad was happy to take screencaps to show them to the whole world. One would think Robert Lieberman's intent was to unmask Adam Lambert as an asshole, but not quite. I had to wait just a few more hours to see the showdown because as soon as Jessica signed out of Adam's official Twitter, a new account popped up, and something just compelled Jessica to sign back in.

When she signed back in, about 20,000 new people started following Adam. The Glamberts were more elated with Adam's triumphant return to Twitter than I thought because I did expect Adam's mentions to get flooded, but I never expected 20,000 new followers in one day. Wow, the star broke his own record of Twitter followers attained in one day. I was floored.

This new account stood among all the others. It had a profile picture that seemed like a selfie Adam had just taken from his phone and set as his—oh, wait. We got a new Skype invitation from the real Adam Lambert, and when we accepted it, he was wearing...

...The exact same clothes in the Skype session that he was wearing in the selfie. 

Adam had just created this brand-new account! And it wasn't incognito.

Dad, Emmanuel, Fernando, Miranda and I went to get some popcorn—a big bowl full. This was gonna be one of his best shows yet.

Adam started tweeting from his temporary account, saying, 'Guys, I've been hacked! I've been hacked! Do not believe anything that comes from the 'adamlambert' account! That account is lost, just like my old Instagram! Remember that?' and drew a sad emoji at the end.

Jessica tried to imitate Adam Lambert's speech and lexicon, but she made it more than obvious that all she knew about him was his music, that she hadn't sat down and watched any of his interview videos because she couldn't imitate his speech for shit.

Various Glamberts started calling the supposed hacker out on his or her facade, making fun of him or her just for not being able to pull this off. Still having copies of the screencaps of the hateful tweets Summer had sent to my dad pretending to be Adam as well, Jessica posted a twit-pic of the screencaps and added the words, 'And I'm not the only hacker.' When the fans took their sweet time to read the messages, they were stunned, and there were hundreds of thousands of tweets filled with pain and outrage expressing the same idea using different words. 'Oh, my God, who would do something like this to someone as sweet as Adam!' 'Who could be this fucked up in the head?' 'This is one evil 'cray'!'”

A video of Adam showing everyone the tweets he'd just sent from his temporary account popped up seemingly out of nowhere. He uploaded it to YouTube and tweeted out the link to his then three million followers. In the video, he explained to his whole twitter fan base what had happened, leaving out only the name of the person that he suspected of doing this out of sheer fear of retaliation. There were other millions of people who abhorred Adam Lambert, so the name of no specific suspect came to mind at that moment. Anybody that was bored and hated Adam too intensely could've done this, but when people noticed the name of the helpless person being bullied so horribly it broke people's hearts just to read that, only one name came to the mind of the three million followers watching what was happening—Summer Rothstein. Summer wasn't smart enough to leave out the name of Katie Lieberman, my mother and her gratuitous worst enemy. If she had left out that tiny detail, and if it hadn't been for Jessica's intermission, people would've indeed thought that Adam was the most heartless asshole in the world, targeting handicapped people, targeting people that were weaker than he was, and he would've lost most if not all his fans.

Afterward, Jessica gave Adam via DM on his secondary account, his sign in information for the account he'd had for six years now, his main account. Jessica lost access to Adam Lambert's twitter and she realized it when she tried to sign back in and couldn't get in, because Adam, we assumed, had changed the password, but Jessica said, “No, he didn't just change the password. He changed everything, not because he distrusted me, otherwise we wouldn't have done everything we did, but to protect his account from hackers. I doubt Summer's gonna go through all the trouble she did in order to hack Adam's twitter again because like Adam said, it took her months to hack it. She's not as smart as I am.” She laughed. “She had to come up with the money to pay a professional to do it, the stupid bitch.”

I couldn't help laughing. “Yeah, Adam explained that he found it strange that every time he'd try to sign in and tweet, he had to change everything—the sign in information, his email, his password, and he would do that more often than he needed to, practically every day, so he noticed that something was wrong. Someone was trying to hack his account already.”

“Summer is hellbent on ruining all of our lives, and I don't know why. She's crazy.”

“I just hope she stops someday. She almost ruined Adam's reputation on line. Can you imagine what would've happened if you hadn't intervened?”

“Yeah, that's why I did what I did, because I'm not Adam's most-passionate fan, but I would've hated it for such a wonderful person to lose the career he's spent his entire life building, all because of someone's relentless but completely unjustified desire for revenge.”

 

* * *

 

Two weeks passed by since this happened. Adam was tweeting from his genuine account now and keeping communication open with his fans. So far, no one had tried to bypass it. We were all calm about that. The last thing we wanted was for our idol's reputation to be tarnished, and even worse, for his enemy to use my mother as a pawn to achieve that morbid goal. We agreed that if there was anyone that deserved the wonderful music career they were enjoying right now, it was Adam Lambert, not only because he'd spent twenty-three of the thirty-three years he'd been alive, on stage, acquiring the necessary experience to get to where he was today, but also because he was such a wonderful person. No one that was as good as him deserved to lose the one thing that meant the whole world to them, the one thing they couldn't live without, which in Adam's case was his career and his adored Glamberts. I didn't see any of the 3,000 Glamberts that were following Jessica, or any of the 1400 Glamberts that were following Emmanuel, tweeting to Adam's secondary account, the one he'd used to communicate with the hacker to beg him or her to get his verified account back with over three million followers. It was difficult for him to get his account verified when he created it back in 2009, and he just didn't feel like going through that hassle again just because a psycho had shown to be completely determined to destroy everything he'd worked his ass off for. Besides, it would take old and new Glamberts alike years to learn Adam's new twitter name, start following and communicating with him. It had taken the man six years now to accumulate three million followers. His number of followers didn't matter that much to him, but the problem was that since he was a celebrity, said number mattered to everybody else that was watching his every move, be it for all the right or wrong reasons.

Emmanuel and I were going everywhere together at this point. He still didn't have sleepovers at my house and I didn't have sleepovers in his. That was pretty much the only thing we didn't do, but every time we went out somewhere, he'd meet me there. It turned out that although he was in college now, he never changed his mind about not moving into a dorm. He was still living with his parents like he was still in school. He'd made an oath to not move into a dorm until the day of his eighteenth birthday, and Emmanuel Campbell was the kind of person who would only change his mind about something if the life of someone he loved and cared about depended upon it, something that still hadn't happened. We would spend up to two hours a day together during our outings, either going to the movies, going shopping, or dining out together. We would both spend our weekly allowances, ten percent of them anyway, on our dates. One day, though...

Mom finally came home. We were elated that she was back home because the house was starting to feel completely empty without her and she'd gotten so bad that we'd have to wait a lot longer to have her back home, but she came back home today, on November 6, 2015, and when we got that call, we bought supplies to throw a party far greater than any of my birthday parties had ever been these past fifteen years. My baby brother had spent this whole time near our mom. Where she was staying, at the rehabilitation clinic, they'd helped her pay a nurse to help her take care of the baby boy that she'd named Robert Lou Lieberman, Jr, after Dad. I compared Dad's baby picture to his, and he also looked exactly like Dad, which I was happy about, but at the same time it scared me a little, because he turned out to be the exact replica of my dad. I'd never seen that. None of the children's of my parents' best friends looked exactly like them. I'd only seen something like this in movies and read about it in novels of different genres. But my excitement over my little brother and my mother being back home got the best of me because when Dr. Campbell came to our random 'Welcome-Home Katie' party, it was then that I remembered there was another case like this, because if one took Emmanuel's glasses and braces off, he looked identical to Dr. Campbell. I couldn't get used to calling him Adam. It didn't set a good precedent at all. If my relationship with Emmanuel blossomed into marriage one day, the day that I'd say 'I do' to Emmanuel, that was the day that I'd start calling Dr. Campbell 'Adam'. I don't know. It just didn't feel right to do so now. And it seemed that he was much more comfortable when I called him Dr. Campbell anyway. I felt comfortable with it as long as he wouldn't become my doctor one day. Thinking about the possibility had me having horrible nightmares.

We made a toast to my Mom. Everyone that was older than twenty-one had a glass of champagne in their hand, and everyone younger than twenty-one had cups of different, non-alcoholic drinks, at least at this moment. I had known them for drinking while they were still too young to do so, but I supposed that, because all of these people had to drive home, they didn't want to get in a car crash or get arrested for a DUI or a DWI if they were lucky enough to not get into a car crash while driving drunk.

Dad was too shook up to talk. He was crying out of happiness and he just couldn't get the words out no matter how hard he tried, so Dr. Campbell had to help him express what he wanted to say.

Dr. Campbell said, “Our hearts are filled with joy with the arrival of Mrs. Lieberman...” he must've been aware of the fact that he'd spent little to no time talking to Mom to just call her 'Katie'... “and her son, Rob Jr.”

Everybody laughed. They must've found it adorable the tone of Dr. Campbell's voice when he said 'Rob Jr.'

Dr. Campbell said, “Thank you for that. I'm rare, you know. I don't hear laughter every day. I hear mostly people crying or being and staying miserable and angry. Hence I didn't think twice in saying yes when I was invited to this party.”

Dad interrupted him. “Adam, would you and Emma,” that was Dr. Campbell. This couple was unusual in that both the husband and the wife were 'Dr. Campbell'. It was just something one didn't get to see every day. “Would you guys like to be my baby boy's godparents?”

I heard Fernando talking to someone on the phone out on the terrace of our house, completely drunk. I hope it wouldn't occur to him to get next to the handrails and fall to his death.

Dr. Campbell turned to look at Dad for a few seconds and then turned to look at his wife. 

Dr. Emma smiled, so he must've thought that she agreed with it when he said, “We'd love to, and we feel honored that you've asked us. We're both old-school, and being godparents is a gigantic responsibility, a promise to the child's parents that has to be taken very seriously.”

Dr. Emma said, “We're flattered but at the same time moved that you trust us enough with this huge responsibility, as Adam said.”

Miranda said, “Just like we're Vanessa's godparents, Robert and Katie are the godparents of our baby, Krystal,” smiling.

Dad said, “Great! I'm gonna make all the arrangements for the Christening, that I hope Rob will honor and be a good boy, like Vanessa honored and became a good girl for us, most of the time...”

Everyone laughed at Dad's comment. I just smiled and blushed.

Dad continued, “...and our dear first goddaughter, Jess, well, she turned out to be her own person, not quite as saintly as Vanessa turned out to be.”

I thought, If I'm saintly, then Christina Aguilera's really a man that's lived as a woman all this time, and Adam Lambert's really a woman that's lived as a man all this time. Come on, really, Dad?

Dad said, “Nah, who am I kidding? Everyone in town that knows the Aguilera and Lieberman families well enough, they know that Vanessa and Jessica are anything but saints.”

People in the party laughed even harder now, and I heard Fernando calling out, “My daughter's a devil, just like her Daddy, and her Daddy couldn't be more proud!” When silence invaded the room, he said, with uncontrollable laughter, “That's right,” and people laughed even harder than him.

I found all of this bizarre. It must've been the alcohol. I hadn't been drunk or even buzzed in over three years so I didn't even remember what that felt like, nor did I want to make a complete fool of myself, again, in front of our family and friends. Did anyone understand what it was like to get pictures of one taken while one was drunk and what that person felt like when he or she saw those pictures on Facebook the next day? I was lucky that Mom and Dad interceded for me and begged those few people to take those pictures down that had uploaded them. The few people that had my drunken pictures, that were by the way been taken without my consent, they had no idea that I was only twelve years old at the time. No one had ever told me that I looked older than I really was, so when they gave Mom and Dad that excuse that they gave to them, I didn't buy it. I'd always looked younger than I was. At age twelve, I only looked nine. That's why I hadn't had a boyfriend until a few months after, because all of the guys in school, I looked a wee bit too young for them and they found it creepy to even try anything with me. I looked like I was in the fourth grade instead of in the seventh. The guys would get with the other girls that looked their age at thirteen or fourteen, or the few that looked even older than that, eighteen or nineteen.

Dr. Campbell said, “My son seems to be a saint, but I know he's not. As my replica I can't expect him to be always right, as strict as I am. But so far he hasn't done anything that will compel me to disinherit him or anything like that, so all is good so far. I just hope that now that I'm about to become part of the Lieberman family, that we can all get along and be happy together.”

* * *


	13. Miranda and I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miranda and Vanessa console one another during the hardest moment in their lives and in the process make a discovery that's just impossible to believe to be true.

I knocked on my mom's door. I needed to ask her if it was okay for me to go over to Jessica's house again to study some more math. It turned out that with Jessica's help, I was able to pass math when I started having difficulty with it last year, but I found out the hard way that math wasn't something that could be learned in one night or in one shot. I was horrible in math, and every year that passed, it got more and more complicated. If I didn't have a friend like Jessica Aguilera, my life would've been a mess and I would've wound up committing suicide. I was thankful for Jessica every day that passed, thankful that nothing had happened between us in these fifteen years that would've driven us apart. I figured out, also, over the years that I didn't want Jessica as an enemy. Nobody did. I couldn't even start to recount all of Jessica's acts of reprisal against her enemies, something that would break Miranda and Fernando's hearts if they ever found out.

Mom called out, “Come in.”

When I opened the door and went in, Mom had the baby in her arms. We'd decided to nickname him Rob, just Rob, instead of Robbie or Bobby. Since Dad didn't like to be addressed as Robbie or Bobby, he didn't think the baby would like either one of those nicknames, so Rob he stayed. Mom was breastfeeding Rob, which surprised me because I thought that all this time, Rob had been fed with formula because Mom hadn't been able to breastfeed him, yet that was exactly what she was doing, with Dad's supervision of course. Dad needed to make sure that Mom wouldn't drop the baby by accident because her hands were too weak to carry or sustain him. Rob was looking right in Mom's eyes as he fed. It was the most beautiful scene I'd ever witnessed in the almost sixteen years I'd been on this earth. It didn't even look this beautiful and warming in the hundreds of chick flicks I'd watched with Mom over the years. I said, “Hi,” to my baby brother making the tone of my voice a little higher and then I sat at the edge of the bed to be a little closer to him. I started caressing his hair. “Howdy, Rob!” I kept my smile in my face. I had waited for a baby brother or sister for fifteen years, almost sixteen, and I thought I'd never have him or her. One of my biggest dreams had just come true, and I couldn't believe it.

He couldn't turn to look at me because he was feeding, but he started moving his hands a bit, I guessed to let me know that he'd recognized the new voice in the room and he was reacting to it. It was only the second time we'd ever seen one another, so I didn't think he'd recognize me as his big sister just yet. He was a little over a year old right now, but he looked more like three months old. I was exactly like this when I was growing up, and it was worrisome to both sides of my family because I wasn't a premature baby. I was just small, but Mom and Dad's families were terrified that I would turn out with serious health problems that caused my growth to be slowed down. I didn't have any problems in the mental department in that regard, though. All my life I'd been known to be the tiny girl with the giant brain, and it was when I started getting straight A's in school with minimal effort on my own part that I understood why, even more so when, while it wasn't very easy for me to make friends, it was easy to keep beside me the few friends I had. My family called me special all the time, and I had never taken it as a compliment because I'd seen other children in town and in my school being called special all the time, and it had always meant mentally challenged or just plain weird. It wasn't until I was eight or nine years old that I knew what my family meant when they told others around town that I was special. I continued talking to my baby brother, but all the while I used real words instead of the constant babbling that people that were older than the babies in their family usually used to communicate with them.

Mom said, “You're gonna be a wonderful big sister,” smiling sweetly at me.

I said, “A very, very big sister.”

Dad said, “You're not the first sibling to be much older than your brother or sister, and you won't be the last. Remember that my only brother is seventeen years older than me. As a matter of fact, he's coming home from Ireland to see his baby nephew. He sys he can't believe that Rob's cousins are old enough to be more like his uncles and aunts, but that this is what happens when your parents have their second child a little older than most parents do.”

Not stopping caressing Rob's head, I said, “Grandma must've been floored when she found out she was pregnant with you.”

“Floored is an understatement,” Dad said, and Mom laughed a bit. “She tells me that when she went to her doctor and her doctor told her that she was pregnant, she didn't understand how she got pregnant at age forty-two. The doctor told Mom that it was simple, that as long as the woman still had a period, she could still get pregnant, no matter how old she was, but that the older the woman was when she was pregnant, the higher risk said pregnancy would be. I am glad you weren't in this world around that time because you would've seen Mom freaking out and going to the doctor's office much more often than most pregnant women did. Your Uncle Bryan's pregnancy was 'blissful', per her words, and she hadn't even had friends that had had high-risk pregnancies before, so she was a mess.”

“Aww,” I said.

He smiled, “But she says it was all worth it, because I met and exceeded all of her expectations. The only disappointment I put her through was when I fell in love too young, she says, but other than that...”

Mom said, “Robert's the kind of guy that's monogamous and completely committed when he falls in love, a rarity. We're not perfect as a couple and to be honest, he was warned to walk on eggshells around me because of my neurosis, but these last few hours I've been home have been good so far. We haven't even had a minor disagreement, which is a miracle.”

Dad said, “We're never loud enough for you to hear us when we do have disagreements, but we do have them more often than not, but you know what? That's what we love about the other, and that's why we can't stay away, 'cause you know.”

I preferred not to go into the details of what Dad was talking about because I feared that just like mine, Rob's IQ would turn out higher than normal and my random sex talk would be stuck in his subconscious and affect him at such a tender age. I mean his life had just started for God's sake. “Yes, I know. Dad, Mom, now that you're together right now, I wanted to ask both of you if I could go over to Jess' tonight to study more math. I need to get a good grade in my test tomorrow, and I can't get a good grade without her help.”

Dad said, “I find out about the F's you get every time you study for a math test without Jess's help, so yes, by all means, go over to her house to study, but keep in mind that this time you're asking us to go there later than usual. Have Miranda drive you back here exactly two and a half hours from now. You need to be back home by eleven o'clock so you have your eight hours of sleep. You get grades you shouldn't when you sleep too little, and your mom and I want you to go to one of the best universities in the country.”

I said, “I know. I'm going to go change really quick and ask Miranda to pick me up. Is that okay?”

Mom said, “Yes, honey.”

I got off the bed and kissed the baby in the forehead. “OK,” I said, starting to walk toward the door. “I'm gonna see you guys later.”

 

* * *

Miranda picked me up. On our way to her house, she asked me, “We're eating pizza for dinner tonight. Did you eat dinner?”

“Yes, I did, but I'm going to have a slice or two,” I said. “Thank you.”

“How long ago did you eat dinner?”

“About two hours ago.”

“Meh, having a second dinner won't hurt you, will it?”

“Not when I have that 'second dinner' at your house it never hurts me.”

She laughed. “When I cook, I cook with all my love, so my food doesn't hurt even the people that are used to eating it. I asked Fernando if it was okay for us to have a pizza night tonight. He said since when I had to ask him permission, that when I wanted a pizza night instead of cooking, to just order a pizza. He said I took him all the way back to the beginning of our marriage, that he'd never been chauvinist and he wasn't about to start now.”

“Fernando said all of that? I expected to hear that from Dad to Mom, but from Fernando to you?”

“I'm gonna be honest. When Fernando and I got married, he expected me to cook for him every single day, do his laundry, iron his clothes right before he was to go to work—and I heard from my friends that most Hispanic men handled their marriage like that, that they almost always expected their wives to be homemakers and do all of their chores for them. Hit pay dirt, the marriage of Fernando's parents is exactly like that. To this day, Ana Maria does everything for Enrique, and I do mean everything. I don't meddle because I don't want them meddling in my marriage. By doing so, I'd give them moral license to meddle in my marriage. Still, when Fernando started hanging out more and more with Robert, I guess that, when I wasn't around, Robert started talking to Fernando about how many American, meaning Anglo-Saxon people, handled our marriages, that in some cases, wives are not homemakers, that wives work, and that wives share the marriage chores instead of doing all of the chores for our husband or there are some wives who do no chores at all, and that your mother was one of those women. When we started coming over to you guys' house and we became your godparents, it was as if Fernando were immersed in a whole new world. He started seeing things from the point of view of some American wives. Your mother is part homemaker. She works outside the home, but at the same time, she does all the chores for everyone in the house. Homemakers are wives or husbands who stay home twenty-four seven, except when they're going to drop off and then pick up the kids at school.”

“Yeah, my parents' marriage is what Ana Maria and Enrique would call a modern marriage.”

“Actually, Ana would go farther than that when describing both your mother's and my marriages. She's referred to my marriage offensively many times. If she didn't love Fernando as much as she does, and if she didn't give a damn about losing him, she would've done something to tear us apart a long time ago. We were Romeo and Juliet because Ana and Enrique didn't agree with our relationship. They never agreed. They wanted Fernando to have a relationship with a Hispanic girl, thinking that all Hispanic girls and women grew up in 'traditional' homes where, more than wives, they'd be slaves to their husbands, practically. In time she learned that lifestyles had nothing to do with nationality and everything to do with the home that one grew up in. My parents are white. But they didn't teach me to be complacent to my husband. They didn't teach that to me or my sisters. Therefore, we grew up, we chose to work outside the home, and do some chores, but not all of them—split the chores. Still I was conflicted because I had just married a Hispanic man who'd grown up in a home where the wife had to be complacent and submissive to her husband. I was lucky that your parents convinced my husband not to be so traditional and uptight that he'd become suffocating, and that he had to understand that I was a woman that had grown up in a home that was completely different from the home he'd grown up in. Two years into our marriage, everything started changing for Fernando and me. He had no problem with me going back to school to have my own career, working outside the home, cooking every other day instead of every single day...”

“So you're saying that in the beginning, you became the wife that Ana would've wanted for her son, but that he noticed somehow that you weren't happy being a homemaker.”

“My husband knows me better than I know myself, and I can't lie to him and tell him I'm happy when I'm not. He can tell when the smile I offer him is not real, and he's an excellent observer of people's behaviors. When something doesn't add up, he knows, and he takes action before we even see it coming. When he noticed Jessica was being bullied back when she was in the third grade, he didn't waste time in having her withdrawn from that school and transferring her to another school.”

“Yeah, I remember I had to beg my parents to go to a different school to follow Jessica and now I see that despite how stupid Mom and Dad thought this was, because I'd still get to see Jess every day, now I know I did the right thing by following Jessica to Oak Ridge Elementary.”

“Yeah, in my opinion you sure did. You and Jessica have spent so much time together that you've become more like Siamese twins.” She smiled. “To be honest, I had a friend like that growing up, Olivia, but we grew apart as we grew up because ever since Olivia's boyfriend started hitting on me, and she heard about it, she dedicated her life to making mine a living hell. If I hadn't met Fernando Aguilera around that time, I can't tell you where I'd be right now, Vanessa. Fernando is still a very-traditional man, but he's romantic. He's always been a fool for love, the kind of guy who'd send you or give you flowers every day, and serenade you.”

I laughed. “Really?”

“Yes, literally, Mom and Dad would get pissed off at him for being right below my bedroom window singing me those 'mariachi' songs, Alejandro Fernandez, Vicente Fernandez, Juan Gabriel—it was always a cover of the song of one of those artists, but his voice was nothing like that of any of these singers.”

I burst out laughing, hard, imagining Fernando serenading Miranda with an extremely tone-deaf and off-key voice.

“I would go back and tune to Spanish-language channels looking for music-video blocks and hoping they'd show the latest music video of any of these singers, and I'd tune in to Spanish-language radio stations looking for Luis-Miguel songs also, and I'd compare Fernando's loving covers with the original songs,” she said and started laughing, too, “and I'd laugh about this in my room for hours, how off key Fernando was compared to them, but it would still melt my heart how he was so deeply in love with me that he'd deliberately and willingly make a fool of himself just to conquer me, just to enamor me.”

“How cute!” I said, and had a random daydream of Emmanuel serenading me in the same way. I'd never heard him singing before, even in the shower, so I shook my head and trembled a little for a moment.

“To drink,” Miranda said, not having noticed what had just happened, or otherwise she would've asked me what was wrong, “we have orange and grape juices, milk, and ginger ale. If you want, we can stop at Walmart really quick and get some Coke, your favorite.”

“Oh, that's so sweet, Miranda, but it's okay. I love all the drinks you mentioned, so having any of them with pizza is fine with me.”

“I'm just saying because if Mom doesn't have Coke with her pizza she gets in a bad mood, and Dad has to run to the grocery store to get Coke when we order pizza.”

“Some pizzerias offer a two-liter Pepsi or Coke with one's order, just saying.”

“Yeah, my parents never had that problem again when they realized that—three years ago.” She laughed again. “Yeah, yeah, thank goodness Pizza Hut offers whole meals now, the pizza, the side dishes and the drink.”

“Yeah, thank goodness, but really, I'm fine having grape juice with my pizza. Sometimes I even have bottled water with my pizza. I drink whatever we have in the house at the moment without demanding anything in specific, especially now that there's one less driver in the house available to go get groceries or anything we run out of at random in the middle of the night.” I sighed and tried to hold in my tears to avoid terrifying Miranda. She treated me exactly as she treated Jessica. When Jessica cried, she'd ruin Miranda's entire day.

I knew that Miranda noticed the change in the tone of my voice because she pulled over in the sidewalk when we were just a mile and a half from her house. She unfastened her seatbelt and gave me the kind of hug I'd only gotten from my mom. “You know, sweetie, this is hard for me, too. If you noticed, I talked about your mom working in the present tense, when I know that even if she recovers from her physical impediments, her neurosis impedes her from working ever again.” She broke down crying and I let loose and started crying along with her. “You're right, she won't be able to drive anywhere anymore even. The cars in the road surrounding her would freak her out, even in the daytime! My aunt is neurotic, and when I found out that Katie became neurotic, I was devastated. My aunt Felicia's life changed forever when her brain changed.”

“At least it's not a mental,” I said, “but a neurological illness.”

We broke the hug. She said, “Yeah, but that doesn't make this any less heartbreaking. My lifelong best friend will never be the same. She'll never be the same, and she's gonna need Robert to take care of her at nighttime, too, so I'm thinking Fernando and I will have to step in and help.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Fernando and I talked about you guys moving into our house while your bathroom were remodeled and converted into a handicapped bathroom.”

“Yeah, because right now, Dad is bathing Mom right in her bed and Mom hates to have to take baths in the bed when she used to just hop in the shower and...” I let my head down feeling a devastating headache coming on.

Miranda took my hand in hers. “We still have our huge handicapped-access bathroom that we had reconstructed especially for my mom when she broke both of her legs during a car collision she was in as a passenger...”

“When Pamela tried to kill her,” I said, finishing her thought.

“Exactly, Pamela the psycho.”

After five minutes of complete silence from both of us, so deep that we heard the birds chirping outside and the dogs barking in adjacent houses, I said, “Miranda, I just got the craziest idea.”

“Tell me.”

“I was thinking, what if Summer Rothstein is nothing but an alter ego of Pamela Pearson, the twenty-something-year-old-freak who tried to kill your mother just so she could become your stepmother?”

She gasped. “What?”

“What if Pamela Pearson is starting shit with us again using this false identity of Summer Rothstein? If such a woman exists with the name Summer Rothstein, how did Pamela steal her identity, if what I think turns out to be the truth? Where is the hypothetical real Summer Rothstein?”

* * *


	14. Blackout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just like her mother did, Vanessa experiences a devastating 'blackout' that could change her life forever.

We arrived at Miranda and Fernando's house. All the while, we hadn't stopped talking about my hypothesis about Summer Rothstein and Pamela Pearson. One has to admit. This sounds like it's something straight out of the most absurd horror movie ever created. Perhaps this crazy idea was nothing but the product of this mental illness I was still trying to deal with—schizophrenia. I'd just been diagnosed with what they called 'full-blown' schizophrenia, and I had started taking medication for it less than a year before, when the diagnosis of the condition was confirmed. I hadn't inherited it from anyone in my family, though. My psychiatrist explained to my dad that I'd developed this devastating mental illness when I learned that my mom had just had a stroke while having just recovered from another stroke. I just couldn't handle this, so many blows coming right at my young and impressionable mind all at the same time, the doctor said. First, this random confrontation with this bully, Summer Rothstein. Then, my mom having a stroke at the hospital during her work hours as a nurse. As if that weren't enough, one of her nightmares is terrifying enough to bring about yet another stroke that left her handicapped, perhaps forever, and neurotic for the rest of her life. That was just too much for me. It was understandable. Most people that had become schizophrenic at my age that had never inherited that from anyone in their family, schizophrenia for them was a direct result of a devastating event in their lives that they just couldn't deal with no matter how strong they'd try to be. There was medication for schizophrenia, my doctor said. It wasn't this incurable malady there was no remedy for and that had given me but a few more hours or days to live. It was manageable. Yes, it was devastating, but if I really took care of myself and took my medication religiously and went to my doctor's appointments regularly, I could lead a healthy life despite my condition. All I had to do was to ignore the voices in my head that kept telling me what a horrible person I was and that sooner or later I'd go right back to my old, wrong ways. I couldn't scream back at these voices to shut the hell up and leave me alone or people around me would believe that I couldn't control my condition, and that would be detrimental to me. The last thing that I wanted was to become incompetent and not have control of my own life from that moment forward, and there was no way that either one of my parents would allow that to happen for the whole time they were to be alive.

My theory didn't seem that far fetched. I mean it made sense at least to me. No detractor of superstar Adam Lambert would go through the hassle of terrorizing one of his Glamberts for eternity and even creepier, singling her out, making that particular fan her one and only target, terrorizing him or her relentlessly, just for supporting Adam Lambert. This had to be a scheme that Pamela had been working on and plotting for years. She'd kept informed about my family, and the one night we went out to see our idol on that Spring in 2014, she took the chance to follow us everywhere we went and spending hundreds of dollars on her hotel stay, her transportation, her Adam-Lambert concert tickets, and her VIP backstage pass, all for nothing, all to start in on Miranda all over again, just to get her revenge on Miranda because Miranda stood in her way between her and Miranda's father. If what I believed turned out to be true, then this woman, Pamela Pearson, was one sick puppy. Targeting Adam Lambert made no sense whatsoever. She was young, but not young enough to love or hate a specific singer or performer. Up until now, that we'd heard of, she was too busy trying to boost her non-existent self-esteem by sleeping with other women's husbands. She didn't want a single or divorced man. She only felt validated and desired as a woman when a married man left his wife to be with her, and then, after a year or two, she didn't want this man anymore, and she'd give him back to his wife like he was just a stolen good, an object. Why would she give a damn about Adam Lambert? Unless she wanted to hurt me and Miranda. She knew that of all of the singers there were out there, Adam was my one and only idol. Forget the singers that had made it big that were within my age range. Forget Austin Mahone and Cody Simpson. My love was Adam Lambert, a man who was now in his mid-thirties and that was old enough to be my father. My mind went all the way back to that night that I met Adam Lambert in person for the first time, and I realized that Pamela, aka Summer, had caught me completely off guard. She had started in on all of us by stealing a kiss from Adam, pretending to be just a homophobe that wanted to humiliate him by trying to prove, first that Adam could just turn straight at the touch or the kiss of a woman, and then, when Adam freaked out at the stolen kiss and said hypothetical homophobe noticed Adam's case was hopeless because he couldn't be flipped, she went on a campaign against all people that were LGBT, and when Adam tweeted out a YouTube video of the incident, that was only the light she needed to be fused to start targeting and terrorizing all of us, the entire Aguilera and Lieberman families. I mean why did it have to be us? Of all of the Glamberts in the world, why did Summer Rothstein have to choose us? Why was her quest for revenge so insatiable and endless? Why coudn't she just leave us and Adam alone?

Because in reality, Summer Rothstein was Pamela Pearson, Miranda Aguilera's worst enemy. A normal person would've expected Pamela to come in between Miranda and Fernando, but no, Pamela was even sicker because she fell for Miranda's dad, who was over twenty years, almost thirty years, older than her. Maybe she had a fixation for much-older men, because the married men that Pamela had pursued and conquered were all older than sixty, and to this day she was in her late twenties. When she developed her disgusting infatuation for Miranda's dad, Ishmael, she was only nineteen years old. Ishmael had cheated in the past, but he could've never kept satisfied a nineteen-year-old-woman, whom he saw as a girl instead of a grown woman. She'd only had him for one night and become obsessed with him, like an erotomaniac, the disorder that people that knew me were scared that I'd develop for Adam Lambert. They were the ones who were crazy. Adam was gay and my dad was two years younger than him! If my dad weren't still alive today, I would've seen a singer like Adam Lambert more like a father figure, not more like a love interest! If I were to have a singer as a love interest, said singer would've been someone like Austin Mahone. As a matter of fact, Austin was my true celebrity crush. Justin Bieber would've been another potential love interest if he wasn't so androgynous. Even with makeup on, Adam looked manlier than Justin's natural, naked face. I didn't have lesbian tendencies, so Justin Bieber was to me—well, a talented singer, nothing more. I would've looked up to him if he hadn't grown up to morph into a douchebag.

Everything was starting to come together for us. The pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together and form a picture that made total sense, a picture that formed everything that had happened to us since the night that changed our lives in the Spring of 2014. It was then that Jess started sending DM's to Adam Lambert like a maniac, telling him about everything that I'd told her and Miranda about this woman, Summer Rothstein, that had terrorized us like no one else had for all this time. As we always did, we waited for Adam's response, but now more than ever, we were yearning for it. Jess and I really wanted to know if Adam thought I belonged in a psychiatric ward or if he could make sense of my random theory about Pamela Pearson and the possible death of the real Summer Rothstein, the woman whose identity Pamela had stolen to execute her macabre plan against the Aguilera family, using my weakened and helpless mother as her pawn.

One month later, we received a Skype call from Adam Lambert. Wait, this man wasn't Adam Lambert. He looked a lot like him, but he was at least twenty years older than Adam. I'd seen E! True Hollywood Story, Adam Lambert's episode, and they'd shown random shots, random videotapes of Adam and his family from when Adam was a baby as young as my baby brother Rob was now. Adam was an exact replica of Mr. Lambert, or as my fellow Glamberts usually called him, Eber. I was the only weirdo who addressed him as Mr. Lambert always. All of my fellow Glamberts either saw him as their father in law, their brother, their dad or their grandfather. Hence, they just called him Eber.

Now, Eber was reaching out to us. I didn't think this was a good thing at all. In my mind, maybe he wanted to tell us how sick and tired he was of us harassing and tormenting his son. Maybe I'd been wrongfully diagnosed and was paranoid schizophrenic instead of completely schizophrenic because I tended to think the very worst of even the most angelical people. I was suspicious of the eighty-something-year-old-lady carrying a bag full of groceries on her way back home on foot, let alone a man who was a total stranger to me, Eber Lambert.

I couldn't stop sweating. My clothes were soaked with my sweat. Even after jogging for hours I'd never sweat this much, and my deodorant was starting to fail. My breathing was becoming faulty and I was starting to choke as Eber appeared on the screen again after Jess's connection failed for a few seconds and almost disconnected us, but Eber was persistent. He just got reconnected when our connection gave him the chance to, so what he had to say had to be of utmost importance, because he said, “How are you guys doing?” 

When I noticed his face was neither angry nor excited, I just dropped to the ground having just fainted, and Jessica rushed to help me up while Miranda tried to start a random conversation with Eber just to distract him from what was happening right behind her. I heard Eber say 'hello, hello', repeatedly, and then I blacked out.

* * *

I woke up from my lethargy less than ten minutes later. Paramedics were surrounding me and I was sitting up, feeling my own head with my right hand, the old sweat now feeling cold from the skin of my forehead to the skin of my fingertips. I started examining my own body, my own motor function or lack thereof as desperate paramedics talked to me and became so worried they started screaming at me, calling out for my attention. “Vanessa! Vanessa Lieberman!” Paramedic #1 said, and Paramedic #2 repeated, but they couldn't get my attention. I kept looking at my own hands to see if they'd become contracted or spastic in any way, like my mom's hands became when she had her second stroke. I ran my index finger through my lips just to see if I my mouth could still open and close completely instead of just half way.

The paramedic called to me again, this time pressing his hand over my shoulder. “Vanessa!”

I turned to look at him and started speaking, paying special attention to my own speech to hear how the hell I sounded. “Where's Miranda, Miranda Aguilera?”

“You remember Miranda,” the paramedic said, and I read his ID card, 'Montanez'. “Do you remember who you are?”

“I'm Vanessa Lieberman.”

He said, “State your full name.”

I said, “I'm Vanessa Nicole Lieberman.”

This turned into an interrogation. Montanez said, “How old are you?”

I said, “Fifteen.”

He asked, “Do you know who your parents are?” and then said, “State their full names, please.”

“Robert Lou Lieberman, Sr, and Katie Elizabeth Lieberman,” I said, not understanding his point in asking me this, but showing him no reaction because I didn't want to be rude to a total stranger who was only trying to help.

“Who were you last talking to when this happened, when you fainted?” the other paramedic said, but I couldn't see the name on his ID.

“I wasn't talking to anybody. We were on Miranda Aguilera's desktop waiting for someone to start a video call with us on Skype, and when the person we were waiting for got connected, I started sweating and barely breathing and I just dropped to the ground and the voices around me sounded farther and farther away from me until I passed out, and from then on, I obviously don't know what happened. I wake up and see you guys around me, and all I'm doing now is checking to see if my motor function is intact.”

Montanez said, “You were afraid you'd had a stroke, too?”

I nodded.

Montanez asked, “Why? What symptoms were you experiencing then?”

I said, “Excessive perspiration, sudden blindness...” I had difficulty remembering what else.

Paramedic Two asked, “Sudden but insupportable pain in your left arm?”

I said, “No.”

Paramedic two said, “You're gonna have to come with us to the hospital to get some major testing done, but based on the lack of pain on the left arm...”

I cut him off. “I had this piercing headache before blacking out, though.”

Montanez said, “Don't worry. You're gonna be okay and you're gonna undergo some testing, OK?”

Mom said, “I hope she didn't just have a stroke like I did.”

Paramedic Two said, “We don't think she did. Random but unbearable pain in the left arm is a surefire sign that something's seriously wrong.”

Mom said, “Yeah, I had that pain in my arm when I had that stroke, but immediately after the usual warning signs, it gave me no chance to do anything about it. It happened immediately after.”

Paramedic Two said, “We're taking her away now,” as they strapped me to the gurney and took me away.

 

* * *

 

Several hours later, I was in the hospital, and Mom and Dad were right beside me. Dad was holding Rob. Yes, despite her deplorable condition, my mother was right next to me, and we couldn't let go of one another at the moment.

Mom said, “We've officially moved into Fernando's house,” speaking slower than she used to, “and we've also started the process of reconstruction of our bathroom. Robert's boss is paying for it in full, and demanding no repayment.”

“That's so sweet of her,” I said.

“I can't believe that I can't remember her name yet,” Mom said.

Dad said, “Memory loss is normal for people in your condition, sweetie.”

Mom said, “That woman's much nicer than I expected her to be when she first hired Robert a while ago. It seems to me like it was yesterday that it happened everything we've been through. This whole nightmare started in April of 2014 and we're on December 2015, almost Christmas. I can't believe it. Time seems to have flown.”

I said, “Yes, it does. I've wanted to ask you for the longest time if you ever got to talk to Eber Lambert.” As I said this I prayed that such event hadn't been a product of my vivid imagination.

“No, sweetie,” Dad said, “He did get connected to us, but we didn't get to talk to him because you dropped to the ground while you were right behind us that we were about to start to talk to him.”

“I'm dying to know what would've happened if I hadn't been chicken shit and fainted.”

“You didn't just faint,” Mom said.

I said, “Have you heard since from anyone at all named Lambert,” I gave a faint laugh.

Dad said, “I can't believe you're still thinking about the Lambert family after all you went through in the last few hours, Vanessa.”

I insisted. “I have to know how Eber Lambert feels about me. I have to know if he's annoyed that us puny fans have been keeping in touch with Adam.”

Mom said, “He showed no signs of annoyance, but rather of concern when he saw Robert dialing 911.”

I gasped. “Eber actually saw you calling rescue for me?”

Dad nodded.

“Oh, my God, everything's gonna get so much worse now! Pamela's gonna know our family is indeed falling apart like she wanted it to.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dad said, “about Pamela and Summer—it turns out that, as crazy as it sounded what you were saying that in reality there were two women involved in this whole sick scheme of Summer's, and not just one, you were half right. Summer and Pamela are indeed two different women, except Summer is not dead like you feared she'd be. You see, the reason why Pamela got away with usurping Summer's identity so easily is because Pamela and Summer, identical twin sisters, have been working on this scheme together. Summer was the one that assaulted Adam by forcing a kiss in his mouth. Hence Summer went to prison for helping her sister by humiliating Adam. Which means that Pamela is still out there, but since she hasn't been right on our tails, it's difficult to know if she's continued stalking us. If she has continued, she's kept such harassment cybernetic.

* * *


	15. We're Awesome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our idol tells me and Emmanuel how awesome we are during a chat filled with ups and downs.

We heard from Adam again. It was Christmas morning then, and to this mind of mine that was comparable to a jigsaw puzzle that was still unresolved, the speed at which time was passing now was mind-boggling. Time had always passed this fast. If it passed any slower than this we'd still be in the year 2001, and I would still be a one-year-old, but the truth was that those twenty-four hours we had per day passed in the blink of an eye, rather. Days were a blur to me now, and they lasted a blink of my eyes. I was almost sixteen, but I felt like the best years of my life had passed me by and there was nothing I could do to get those good times back, to get that feeling back.

Emmanuel accepted a new Skype call with Adam, and I was sitting right beside Emmanuel, watching what was happening, biting my nails, and letting Emmanuel talk to him instead of talking to him myself because I had so many things to say but I also had the biggest knot in my throat and I just couldn't.

Adam said, “It's good you are with Emmanuel, Vanessa. I was worried about you when Dad called me saying he saw your parents calling 911 for you, and to be honest, he felt very bad because he thought that you thought that he was trying to scare you somehow.”

I said, “I...I...”

Emmanuel took my hand in his and said, “I think what Vanessa means to say is that she didn't expect your father to try to reach out, and she told me when she came back from the hospital that she reacted the way she did because she was sure that your father was trying to get in touch with us just to tell us that he'd had enough and to demand that we leave you alone.”

Adam said, “Actually, Eber and I know one another better than anyone in this world, and though he didn't have the mind to tell me what his intentions were when he invited you to a Skype chat that day, I can assure you that he's not the kind of person to treat my fans like that. On the contrary, he is forever moved by my fans' love and support for me. He knows that if you'd abandoned me, I'd be a nobody. It's not easy to keep one's grip on reality when one gets everything one's ever wanted and all of a sudden loses it all. To be honest I would've preferred to never have become famous rather than having become famous and having gone back to be one more of you just because some crazy ass person decided to shatter my dreams and flush down the toilet all the hard work, all the blood, sweat and tears, for these past almost twenty-five years of my life.”

Emmanuel said, “Twenty-five years of hard work going down the drain, yeah, that would suck ass.”

Adam said, “Vanessa, ever since I received those DM's from Jess, I've been thinking about—more like obsessing about what you said about Summer Rothstein having an identical twin that was helping her with her vendetta against Jessica's mother for not allowing her to be happy, in her warped little mind, with Miranda's father. I don't mean to make fun of you, Vanessa. I mean it does sound like something straight out of Stephen King's most terrifying novel, which every novel I read by him gets more terrifying, but the reality is that Stephen's works, just like the works of any other writer or songwriter in the world are inspired by real-life events. We storytellers take what happens in real life and sometimes we exaggerate it, sometimes we twist it—all I know is that nothing that we storytellers of the world write comes out of nowhere. Stephen's works are inspired by evil people—either evil or crazy people: psychopaths and sociopaths all over the world that I couldn't quite pinpoint because in my time, when I was growing up and I was very young, they didn't quite have a name for the bad seeds of the world yet.”

I asked, “Do you believe me, though?”

Adam said, “Yes, and believe it or not, the Rothstein or Pearson twins...”

I said, “Oh, my God, are you serious?”

He smiled and said, “Yes. I don't know their maiden name so I have to call them Rothstein Pearson. Judging from Summer's age, Rothstein is her husband's name. Pearson must be their maiden name because let's be honest. Who would marry such a crazy-ass, obsessive, psychotic bitch...?”

Emmanuel and I burst out laughing. Emmanuel was using a special program to record the whole chat, even what we were saying back to Adam when we replied.

Adam laughed, too, although he knew this wasn't funny because we were talking about someone who couldn't have been more messed up in the head, and anyone with a heart would find that terrifying. “If Pam Pearson couldn't steal away someone's husband and keep him for good it's because Miranda's dad, with all due respect, was in for the good fucking, and...”

We couldn't stop laughing, although I knew that imagining a sixty-something-year-old, regardless of gender, copulating with a twenty-something-year-old, was downright gross. Why someone would sleep with someone forty years older that they weren't married to I just couldn't comprehend. To me, it was no different than for one to sleep with their grandparent. Just eww...

He continued, “And when the going got rough, he just bolted, and she couldn't handle it because he made her feel like a piece of shit. I don't know the man. Therefore I'm an asshole if I dare to bash him, but that's my personal interpretation of what happened. If I weren't afraid to offend Miranda and her family, I would've gone ahead and written a song about this already, but it's a touchy subject matter. I'm almost thirty-four. I would never touch someone so much younger than me. Early twenties is still okay, but I know Adam Lambert and I know that when I turn forty or fifty, I'll start passing by the twenty-something-year-olds and focusing on the thirty-something-year-olds. I just know because come on. What twenty-something-year-old would set his eyes on sixty-something-year-old-me?”

We plead the fifth on that one because we couldn't have disagreed more. Emmanuel even said he got a snapshot of Eber when Dad was able to get one during the few seconds we were connected to him that day, and even he said that he wished he looked that handsome on the edge of sixty.

Adam said, “Moreover, if I were twenty myself, I wouldn't set my eyes on my possible grandpa, I'm sorry. It's just that's what age ranges are for, and age is not just a number. I equate age with experience because virgins my age are so rare they're needles in haystacks, and if I met one and he confessed it to me, I'd slowly slip from his fingers because that'd be just wrong. I wouldn't be sick to take advantage like that. You know what I mean? If my partner's thirty or older, I expect him to be experienced, not quite as experienced as me, but not a virgin either.” He clenched his teeth like someone was pulling hard at his hair. Then he shook his head. “Anyway...” he said, louder than usual trying to erase the gross images from his head I assumed.

Emmanuel laughed again, but I was a little queasy. I interpreted this as Adam seeing a sixty-twenty kind of relationship in a psychological point of view rather than a physical or sexual one. No twenty-year-old in this world, regardless of gender, had the experience that a sixty-year-old did, or the knowledge, unless said sixty-year-old was what they called a forever alone kind of person. My attitude changed completely when I started imagining sixty-year-old-Pamela Pearson completely alone after a river worth of failed relationships, and that made me smile, but I didn't want anyone to know so my smile faded as quickly as it appeared, so quickly that even Emmanuel didn't notice it even though we'd gotten to know each other on a much-more intimate but non-sexual level because we still hadn't consummated our love, and although Emmanuel showed me he was strongly attracted to me with every kiss he gave me, he hadn't tried to go second base with me. He knew I was too young and not ready yet and he didn't want to put me through the same hell that grown woman put him through at a time when he wasn't even ready to stop playing with little toy cars, let alone lose his virginity.

Adam said, “I don't like to think about sex unless I have a man right next to me doing the same, but I'm a man, and they say that men think about sex twenty-four seven. I can't say this applies to all men in the world, but it applies to me, but when I think about me in bed with someone that's forty years older or younger than me, my boner disappears. It just—yeah. The lovely psycho twins have photos of themselves together all over their old Facebook accounts. Stupid bitches didn't realize that when a human being's pissed off, said human being is capable of the most fucked-up shit one could ever do, and that several years after, I guess, having forever lost access to said Facebook accounts and not deactivating them; I'm guessing they didn't count on the fact that a very pissed-off Adam Lambert would ever dig deeper and find said photos of them together.”

Emmanuel and I facepalmed at the same time, and I had a random flashback of when Adam's secret about his sexuality came out like a roaring lion in the dark night precisely because of photos that came from an old-ass social media account that Adam had lost access to, but like he just said, never deactivated; an account that a very-vindictive person with too much time on their hands chose to access said account through a search and leak as many photos as possible of Adam doing pretty much everything...

Adam interrupted my thoughts when he said, “I know what you're thinking. What happened to me back in 2009, that I was outed to the media without even knowing about it, that's what happened to the lovely Pearson-slash-Rothstein twins. The only difference is that I didn't leak anything. What we know is something that no one else needs to know. Look at the bunch of shit that Summer threw at us, in every sense of the word, just for me leaking the video where she forced a kiss on me. I don't want her attacking Mrs. Lieberman with much more force than she did before, when I did that,” he sighed, “before. If I were the only party receiving these attacks, I wouldn't care. I would just keep throwing shit and getting shit thrown back at me repeatedly, and then, the control freak I am, I would decide when the shit-slinging would stop. But the truth is that everything that happens between me and Summer falls right upon Katie much harder than it would fall upon me. I've got the money. I've got an aggressive and rabid team of attorneys. I've got the resources I need to defend myself from these attacks. You guys don't, and Katie's already defenseless enough. What I fear is for one of Pamela's minions, Pamela, the one that's closer...”

Emmanuel said, “Oh, God,” and started trembling.

Adam said, “I don't want Pamela sending her thugs to maul Katie. That's my fear. Both twins know this. So far they have me grabbed by my balls, hard. I figure the only way to get them off you guys' back is for me, Pamela and Summer to come to an understanding between the three of us to keep Katie out of harm's way. I just don't have the heart to allow someone that's been through so much shit to get thrown more shit at them, and then use me as a pawn. I know that you guys' differences with Pamela cannot be worked out, but I'll be damned if the twins keep trying to use me as a weapon. I won't stand for it. To me that's like running over a handicapped person with their own wheelchair, just the cruelest...” he sighed and let his head down. He looked back up. “I can contact Pam, not Summer, 'cause I can't go and violate my own restraining order against her. If I do I'll have no credibility and then when I need another restraining...”

Emmanuel cut him off and said, “They won't give it to you.”

Adam said, “Exactly. I don't know how deranged Summer could be, although I know how deranged Pamela is, like unsalvageable, lamentably, but Summer thus far has been nothing but her sister's minion. I want you guys to know that all of the cybernetic attacks you've received have come from Pamela, not from Summer. The only thing Summer did was to throw that knife at me. Stupid girl didn't think I'd press charges, but I did, she did her time, she's doing her community service, and she hasn't attacked me again, even verbally.”

Emmanuel said, “Because she messed with the wrong bull.”

Adam smiled. “I wouldn't quite put it that way. I'd say that if I didn't have all the money I do, and if I weren't a celebrity that has influence on a lot of people, she would've started in on me again and killed me already. She would've killed me, and considering her sister's deplorable mental condition, the crazy bitch would've found a way of getting away with murdering me, too. There's this wall between us solely because I'm a celebrity. That's all it is. Still, I'm gonna try to reach out to Pamela somehow without--”

I said, “I doubt you could've possibly gotten a restraining order against Pam because all the while, you'd been thinking that it was only one person doing all of these horrible things, not two.”

Adam said, “Exactly. I'm gonna see exactly what Pamela wants, so I can give it to her and hopefully...”

Emmanuel interrupted him talking back to him with the most malevolent grin I'd ever seen on him since I'd met him years ago. “You can't give her what she wants, Adam. You just can't,” and started laughing.

I nudged his arm with my elbow. “My God, Emmanuel...”

Adam widened his peppermint-disc blue eyes and then opened up a smile and burst out laughing.

I laughed, too.

Adam said, “Oh, my God, Emmanuel,” he turned serious for a minute and made one of his hundreds of different funny faces, “for age sixteen, you have a filthy mind. Even if she were a man, I would never. Seriously. If she were a man, I would rather do you know what for the rest of my life. She scares me. She...”

Emmanuel and I couldn't stop laughing.

Adam said, “No, seriously...but I contacted you guys to ask you if I could...”

We had an uncontrollable laughing fit at this point and we kept interrupting poor Adam. Imagining Adam and Pamela together was just too much. I started daydreaming about a heterosexual Adam Lambert feeling utter repulsion toward Pamela as he made love to her. Other women were surrounding him, interested in getting with him, and here he was, with a gun pointed to his head, forced to satisfy this disgusting woman sexually, and something hilarious turned into something terrifying.

Damn, I thought I oughta become a writer. My own imagination was so damn good it gave me nightmares. Could I be the female Stephen King in the far, far future?

I said, “Goddamn it, Adam Mitchel, now you and Emmanuel got me daydreaming about you turning straight, having hundreds of women waiting in line to get with you, while you have a gun pointed to your temple and are having sex with a Pamela Pearson that looks like one of those 'The Walking Dead' zombies. Oh, my God,” I said, unable to stop my day-nightmare. My eyes watered up. “Oh, my God...”

Adam said, nodding, “You should consider becoming a horror novelist.”

Emmanuel said, “I know, right?” his tone changing into a cheerful one, and now my boyfriend was starting to scare me. Then he turned to look at me and said, “Why don't we get a head start on the draft of a horror novel! Yeah,” he cheered, “let's write a horror novel together just for the piss of it, our own project; something great to remember you by. What do you say?”

I smiled. “If that's what you want.” I faced the computer again. “You were saying, Adam? I'm sorry we keep interrupting you. We're rude.”

He replied, “Rude, but awesome at the same time, so you're forgiven. I can't help being fascinated with you guys. You make me have random flashbacks of the messed up things I used to get away with when I was you guys' ages!” He opened up a devilish smile that looked so beautiful it made me jump for joy. I know, I was crazy, but who wouldn't get totally crazy when this man was around? “I wanted to ask you if I was invited to your upcoming Sweet Sixteen, Vanessa, as a performer.”

I fainted again, but this time there was no terror and no symptoms of a stroke.

* * *


	16. BitterSweet Sixteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa's Sweet Sixteen party is filled with beautiful and then horrible moments.

It was the day of my Sweet Sixteen party, and it wasn't very fancy. As a matter of fact, if this made the news, I'd be the girl with the 'cheapest' sweet-sixteen party ever because my parents had only spent $500 in decorations, $400 in food for all my friends and family for one day, and a total of $1,000 in presents: a new iPad, a new laptop, a few new clothes, and office supplies because I was a novelist now. This was something I was doing solely for entertainment but my romantic and loving family took it much more seriously than I expected. I was too young to take it seriously. I had just turned sixteen two hours ago according to my mom, and the only teenage writer that had made it big that I knew about was Christopher Paolini, with his series Eragon, and that was because he had 'connections', and although that counted for something, I didn't expect to become the next Paolini. I knew that in order to gain some recognition, the talent that people said I had that had read my fan fiction inspired by Divergent, in my opinion, that wasn't enough. I needed to learn the craft, and I needed to acquire experience. After all, Stephen King was in his forties when he published his debut novel Carrie, his most popular one to date, the novel that had the most movie adaptations ever, five of them that I'd counted, including the newest one released in 2013, which I had gone to see with Miranda and Jessica. I liked it, but I had also seen the very first movie adaptation ever made, the 1977 release starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie as the mother from hell, and nothing could beat the original movie. Nothing. The only difference between the 1977 version and the 2013 version was that of course, the 2013 had all the modern gadgets used for communication that in 1977 couldn't even dream of existing, like iPads, iPhones, wifi internet, you name it. In my mind, that was what made the 1977 movie adaptation of Carrie more exciting, that I got a glimpse of what technology and appliances and electronics were like in the late seventies. I was so sick of seeing the newer technology I was surrounded by. Perhaps I should've been sixteen in 1977. Who knows?

I was wearing the simplest dress ever compared to my friends that had just had their sweet sixteen parties last year, but I was happy with it. Since I wasn't a multimillionaire by any means, I'd look more like a monkey in my opinion if I even dreamed of putting on a five-thousand-dollar or more dress. My dress cost $298 dollars, though, and it was so long that it got to my feet, white, made of a silk-like fabric, but thick underneath instead of see-through, and the chest was completely covered. I wasn't twenty years old, so I didn't want to wear my tops now like the ones I wanted to wear at age eighteen, showing off cleavage that started developing. I went from cup A to cup C in my bra over the last several months, and I was happy with that, too. I wasn't pixie-stick thin, but if my breasts had grown to a D cup, I would've convinced my parents to pay for me breast-reduction surgery. C was OK. So was B. A was almost plain chested, but D? I didn't want to have a porn star body. I was more than happy with my body because I wasn't disfigured or disproportionate. I was happy with my size six tops and my size eight pants. No one that was in her right mind wanted to be a size zero unless she was born pixie-stick thin, ate like an animal, gained no weight, and had no choice but to accept that, like my cousin, Sophia. Just like me, age sixteen, except that, unlike me, she was size one everywhere, had more Big Mac value meals than I ever did, more ice cream than all the children in my neighborhood combined, and she still gained no weight. I had to work hard to maintain my average body, through diet and exercise. Sophia just had to stand there and stay blissfully thin, but after having pixie-stick thin all this time, I didn't envy her. My body was finally normal! Yay! I'd need glasses for the rest of my life, but my braces were gone, and I could finally eat anything I wanted without fear of it getting stuck everywhere in my mouth. I was wearing little to no makeup. No eyeshadow. No eyeliner. No lipstick, just foundation in the face covering my acne marks. That was more than enough for me. I was also wearing high-heeled shoes for the very first time and it was notable in how I kept stumbling and tripping upon myself as I walked out of my room. Rob started crying. Mom was outside taking fresh air and enjoying the sun after having taken care of him all day now that she'd regained her motor function in her hands after months of pain and suffering, so I took off my heels and left them in the hallway, starting to walk around the house barefoot, and deciding to only wear them outside to show them off because they were part of the outfit. They'd come with the dress so to speak and the pearls I was wearing on my neck that had belonged to my great-grandmother once. I had been the only daughter of Robert and Katie until now, so they thought that made me entitled to my father's grandmother's adored pearls that in the past had cost her a fortune, all her life savings she had had once. I went to the kitchen and made my little brother a bottle. My left strap in my dress had fallen down my arm, but I wasn't worried because the support my strapless bra provided me, it showed. It made my regular-sized breasts seemed bigger than they already were, but I was confident nothing out of order would happen because all of the adults in this house were family members of mine, and Miranda and Fernando Aguilera weren't related to me by blood, but they were my godparents, so to me, they were my relatives just the same. It wasn't the right time to breastfeed Rob, so for these rare times we had the most-expensive baby formula available in the market that we prepared with purified water. It was the only expensive thing we had lying around in the house besides our appliances. Our electronics? The only new things were mine and Dad's computers. Dad had just bought his own iMac desktop, and of course, I just got my new Mac Book Air as a birthday present. My dad must've figured that since we had a Macintosh desktop, our laptops also had to be Macintosh. Mom however was a Windows user because she could count on her husband who had been a computer technician practically for half his life, thus he was repairing computers long before he started going to college to get his degree.

I held my little brother, giving him the love he needed, the warmth and the companionship, taking away his feeling of loneliness, fed him, washed him, changed him, and left him sleeping in his crib, making sure to get him to remain lying on his back. I didn't want him to lie on his stomach. I was afraid he'd suffocate and die in his sleep. He was fourteen months old now, but he was special and lived the life of a five-month-old, and had to be treated like one, too. Otherwise, he'd get sick. At his age, I was just a smaller-than-normal baby, but he was special in more ways than one. He'd had a complication during his birth and had Erb's palsy now, so Dad had to work harder and harder every day, and Miranda and Fernando Aguilera were still right by our side. Mom's new bathroom had just been finished, and we'd just moved back into our home, so it was a double celebration today.

When I went outside, Emmanuel was outside, looking handsomer than ever. He'd just gotten a new haircut, and he was wearing a suit with tie and everything. I put my hand in my chest. How sweet! Emmanuel, who had dressed casual since I met him, was now dressing in suit and tie just for me. But then again, my Sweet Sixteen was the first time that I was wearing a fancy-looking dress, too. Before today, I'd only worn v-neck tops and jeans or long skirts. I didn't want to look like the fancy girl I'd never been. I didn't want to be my conceited and condescending archenemy, Lena Walker, who was madly in love with Emmanuel and trying to seduce her, but if Emmanuel got no boners for me, what made him think she could give him a boner? What, the biggest whore in school? After the horrible initiation Emmanuel Campbell had had, he'd have to be under the influence of meth to dump me for a slut. Lena practically gave in to the entire football team, and she was bullied for being a slut. If Emmanuel hadn't been savagely raped at twelve by a twenty-one-year-old, he would've been with Lena instead of being with me, a total dog, like most of the boys at our school. His trauma held him back from giving into his darkest desires, so I guessed he was with me because he felt safe with me, the virgin who'd never even caressed him, reviving the most horrible moments of his life. He was starting to lead the sex life of any other normal seventeen-year-old now and loosening up with his sexual desires, but he hadn't gone quite all the way when it came to that. He hadn't had sex since he got raped, so he had no idea how to take a girl's virginity without hurting her, which was his biggest fear and the reason why he didn't dare to go beyond just kissing me, but his kisses were so intense that they made me want him more and more every day. I held back, too, because I didn't want to ruin his life by reviving his biggest horror. I wanted to soothe him, not to cause him any more pain.

I walked up to Emmanuel and gave him a big hug. We shared a peck and hugged some more, and Jessica took a couple of pictures of us in her phone, but for our protection from the crazy Summer, she decreed not to upload these pictures to any of her social networking accounts.

Adam Lambert's band's truck appeared in my driveway. It was similar to Queen's truck, but not very big, because Adam's band was smaller compared to that of the rock legends of Queen. The party was almost over, and I hadn't told anybody that Adam was coming. It was mine and Emmanuel secret because we didn't want anyone to get overexcited over someone that we didn't know for sure that they were coming. We knew how many celebrities were. They always wanted to keep their promises to fans if they were honest, but the most incredible shit would happen to them at the very last minute sometimes, so Emmanuel and I couldn't swear over a Bible that Adam was coming, but he was here. We knew this from how everyone in the neighborhood caused the road in the block to be—blocked! This seemed more like a lucid dream. I had never known any of my neighbors as Glamberts. They had been, once, before the fan base attained Glamberts as their official name, but I thought this had been a phase they went through when Adam was on Idol eight years ago. I thought all of that fascination with Adam had passed when American Idol 8 was over, but obviously, I was wrong. My neighbors apparently preferred to profess their fanaticism for Adam online rather than in real life. I was shocked because I hadn't heard any of my neighbors playing Adam's songs from their stereos even once, even when they were washing their cars or mowing their lawns.

Now the party had many more people in it than what were invited, but this was great. In my own opinion, I had the best sweet sixteen ever, and this was only the beginning because my biggest hero besides my father hadn't started performing yet. He was busy shaking hands with his adoring fans, while at the same time feeling like he was one more of us all over again. He'd always been much more a music fan than a celebrity anyway, and tonight was his night off, going back to the days when his audience were the people from town rather than people who had come to see him from different corners of the world, the lifestyle he'd lead for the last eight years that he adored, but every once in a blue moon, he missed his pre-celebrity life, and tonight it showed because he was talking to these complete strangers like they were the people he'd grown up with.

He started with his usual banter while Byron, our neighbor, recorded everything that was going on since Adam's sudden arrival, with his video camera, to upload the video to YouTube, not everything, he said, just the parts where Adam performed. “This goes to Vanessa Lieberman on her sweet sixteen. I came here to perform this one and only song because I wish I had enough time to just do a whole concert, but unfortunately I don't. She told me a few moments ago the song of mine that meant the world to her. I don't know exactly why this is the one song that touches her so deeply, but it's the song she requested and it's the one I'm gonna sing. It's my own song, it's from Trespassing, it's named Underneath, track number ten in all three editions of Trespassing. I hope you like it.” He performed Underneath and melted my heart more than anyone ever did. 

This was his song, the very story of his life. It was also, unfortunately, the story of my life. This song described word for word, note for note, exactly how I felt. I watched him pour his heart out and sing it with a lot more emotion than usual, which I didn't think he could do because I was never able to forget the very first live performance of this song back in November 2012 at Cape Town. It was still difficult for him, incredibly difficult to perform it, so much so that at the end of the song, his eyes were reddened and irritated and he had his head down. I couldn't tell if he was crying because this song brought back painful memories of his own that had inspired it in the first place, or if he was crying because he couldn't believe that I was currently going through the exact same torment. I couldn't imagine his mother going through what mine was. That'd be the end of him for sure. Mom and I were close, but Adam and Mrs. Lambert were even closer as mother and son. When he was about to leave, he went up to me, held both of my hands in both of his hands and told me with a voice so strained that for moments I thought he'd have to go to the hospital for some emergency medical attention, “I will never stop lamenting everything that's happened and no matter how hard I try, I'll always feel like I was the catalyst.”

Mom said, “It wasn't something you wanted it to happen. You didn't plan it. You would've never in a million years made way for someone to do something like this to someone else, Adam, but the fact is, as much as it pains you, that you were indeed the catalyst. You were the random passerby that literally got caught in the crossfire and got used as a shield against several bullets, taking them all yourself ultimately. Rest easy, will you? The person that did this will not get away with it. I can assure you that, and of all of her victims, I was the one that was hit the very hardest. I don't stress or fret despite my pain 'cause I know for a fact that one day, she's gonna pay for everything she's put us through. That's just the thing about evildoers, Adam, about the what you called them? The bad seeds. They do what they want to do 'cause they think they're gonna get away with it, but they're wrong. You'd have to have made a pact with the devil for you to get away with things like what she did, and even so you don't because you get everything you want on earth then cause the devil protects you from the consequences of your own evil deeds, but you wind up paying cause you wind up spending eternity and then some burning in hell anyway.”

Walking closer to him, my neighbor, Kramer, Byron's twenty-one-year-old brother, said, “I know you're Atheist, and Atheists don't believe in heaven or hell, but if you indeed don't believe in either concept, keep this in mind—that Pamela Pearson will not die—did you hear me? She will not die until she pays for every single little thing that she's done to you guys. She's gonna pay dearly and you're young enough to get to see it, and you're gonna see it. If you don't see it with your own eyes, then you're gonna hear about it, but you're gonna know about it. You're a few days from turning thirty-four, right?”

Adam nodded.

Kramer said, “Well, guess what? I'm twenty-one, man, Pamela is twenty-eight, and Pamela is the reason why I can't bear the thought of having sex with a woman even if my very life depended on it because my mom and my dad got divorced because of her,” he started crying, “and guess what happened to my dad? He killed himself. Yeah, that's Miss Pamela Pearson for you. She makes you thank God that you are gay, even though you're looked down upon for being gay and even though you don't believe in God, she literally makes you thank God for being gay, because she's a real-life femme fatale. You know, Miranda's father barely slipped from under her because don't you know, she got him to get life insurance and make her the beneficiary 'cause the man's incompetent. It took a miracle for Miranda to undo all the shit she did because if Miranda hadn't gotten a horde of attorneys to try to invalidate that policy, Miranda's father would've died within days. Guess who the beneficiary was of my dad's life insurance policy?”

* * *


	17. Crush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vanessa's across-the-street-neighbor anad childhood friend, Kramer, falls in love with Adam Lambert at first sight. What will happen now that Adam has to leave and no one knows if he's coming back?

When Adam was about to leave, my mom asked to be taken out to say goodbye. She went down the ramp in her power chair and I was right behind her to make sure she wouldn't fall. Adam looked behind him when he was about to get into the truck. Kramer followed him, too.

Mom said, “I just want you to know that we will always love and support you. You're the only person that I can't say what I want to say to right on cue. With you, I'm always too late.”

Adam smiled. “I'm very fond of you guys, too. I've said the same thing in a million different ways, and I've repeated myself countless times, but it's the truth. I will never be the same again until I know you guys are okay. I see very little things have improved in all this time.”

Kramer interrupted us. “May I say something?”

This was the first time that Adam and Kramer had interacted directly, so I expected Adam to be more distant toward him, but he treated him just like he'd treated us all this time. It must've been difficult for Adam to hear that we weren't Pamela's only victims, and that Kramer's family was destroyed, too, because of her. “Sure.” I noticed he hadn't let go of my mother's hand, and he was moving his hand with hers, to know if her hand was functioning better. He must've either done extensive research about neurological disorders, or maybe he had a family member or a friend that suffered from a neurological disorder. 

Kramer said, “I've always been the biggest fan of your music.” He was much more choked up than we'd ever been. What we felt for Adam was undying admiration. The Lieberman family saw Adam Lambert as an example to follow because he was such a phenomenal person. But Kramer's admiration was different. Kramer had a crush on Adam, a big one, and upon meeting Adam in person for the first time, this feeling only intensified. Kramer's eyes were starry. I could tell because Kramer and I grew up together and he went over to my house every single day. When my parents bought this house, his parents had moved in to this neighborhood two years before. Kramer's mother, Jennifer went over to my house to ask for a little bit of sugar one week after we moved in, and since then, mine and Kramer's parents became as close as my parents were to Miranda and Fernando. We had hundreds of pictures that we'd taken together over the years. We even had pictures of me and Kramer playing together. He held me in his arms when I was a newborn even though he was six years old at the time. I saw pictures of him holding me, but he wasn't as tiny as the average six-year-old-boy then. He was taller and a little stronger. Kramer's dad, Ryder was six-foot-four and his body was strong. Now, Kramer was as tall as Adam and his body was of athletic build, but his arms were muscular. I knew Kramer well enough to know that of the few men he'd been with, the only man he'd ever looked at with these starry eyes was his first boyfriend, Dustin, that he'd dated six years before. He was Kramer's first love, but their relationship was ephemeral because Dustin didn't love Kramer back. Kramer continued talking to Adam, after a few minutes of silence. “I have to know if you're ever coming back here so I can see you in concert.”

“I hope so. When I do, you're all invited to my concert.” A few minutes later, Adam left with his band.

Kramer went back into the house with my mom and me. He carried my mom back into the house bridal style while I helped get her power chair back into the house. Mom had asked him to get her out of the wheelchair and accommodate her on our living room sofa. Mom trusted him. Dad was repairing someone's desktop right now, and she didn't want to bother him. Before Adam arrived, since Dad had work to do, Dad had asked us to record Adam's banter and performance for him so that he could see it from his own computer later, when he had a few minutes of free time. He rarely had time for himself working in his boss' company and repairing computers at night, too, when he got back from work. In order to ensure our financial stability, since Mom couldn't work, Dad had to work as much and as hard as he could, exhaust all of the resources that he had. The money just couldn't stop coming in. It would mean one less meal on the table for us. One less mortgage payment we'd be able to make. Dad was taken full advantage of his youth and his amazing physical and mental strength to do the most he could as our sole financial provider.

Mom asked me, “Sweetie, would you please make me some coffee?” with the biggest and brightest smile on her face. “I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight anyway, so I might as well curb this sudden craving for coffee and stay up.”

I said, “Sure,” holding Mom's hand. I walked out of the living room to make the coffee.

Kramer took a seat right next to Mom and Emmanuel sat next to Kramer. Dr. Campbell was conversing with Dad in the room of the house that Dad used to do his computer-repair work. We could hear them talking and laughing. Kramer asked Mom, “Katie, did you notice how sweetly Adam held your hand?”

Mom said, and I could tell her tone was cheerful even being in the kitchen and unable to see her smile, “Yes, but the way he was holding my hand it was to see how well it functioned. He was managing my hand like my physical therapist does every time I go for a session.”

Kramer said, “That's what I mean. How sweet he is, no? I can't believe how close he's gotten to you guys.”

I pressed the 'on' button on the coffeemaker when I loaded the right amount of coffee grinds, enough for everyone in the house, for twelve cups, and filling it with water up to the top.

Mom said, “I think he's the family member of one of Rob's friends from where Adam grew up, and that's why Adam didn't stop after sending us those $6000 to finance my medical treatment.”

Emmanuel said, “You're right. Someone from the Lieberman family is linked to someone from the Lambert family. What's left to figure out is who from the Lambert family is linked to you guys, and how.”

I went back to the living room with my mother's cup of coffee in hand: served in her favorite, beautiful, big pine-green mug, with three teaspoons of sugar and some hazelnut-flavored coffee creamer, just the way she liked it.

Dad and Dr. Campbell went to the kitchen together to make a cup of coffee for each one of them. The problem of this desktop computer to be repaired was much more serious than Dad thought. As they both prepared their cups of coffee at the same time, Dad said, “Damn, I'm gonna have to replace all of that computer's hardware to get it working again. It's completely blank, and I tried installing onto it my copy of Windows 8, but this computer is completely burned out. It has nothing but a blank screen with a cursor on it similar to the one that the word processor has when one goes to write something on a new document, but it's empty. It has no activity whatsoever, no BIOS, nothing.”

“I think you should advise him to just buy a new computer,” Dr. Campbell said.

I went back to the kitchen. “Dad, Dr. Campbell, is the coffee good that I just made? I was very nervous when I made it and...”

Mom called out, “It's great, honey. I just finished my cup.”

I turned to look toward Mom. “Really?” I said, trembling a little.

Emmanuel said, “Yeah, it sounds good, and even though I never liked coffee, I'd like to try some.” But his voice was so powerful he could talk to someone in a different room for him in a normal voice instead of having to call out. I thought he hated his parents screaming at one another, so he preferred not to have to raise his voice. 

Kramer said, “Lambert is a lot more handsome in person than on TV.” When I looked at him he was smiling as if the man he was talking about was the his first boyfriend, the man that broke his heart, talking about the way he talked about Dustin when they'd just started dating.

I walked out of the kitchen, passed the living room, and walked through the hallway to go to my room. I wanted to take a quick shower before changing into my pajamas and going to bed. I was lucky today was a Saturday and I didn't have to get up early despite the fact that my Christmas vacation had just ended. I took a shower like I wanted to, changed into my pajamas, and while Mom, Kramer, Emmanuel, Dad, and Dr. Campbell chatted and laughed together, I checked on my baby brother, cradled him and helped him to fall asleep once again. Mom spent more time taking care of him than seeing Adam's performance actually, because she believed that if she spent too little time with Rob, that the bond between mother and baby son would break, but then again, Mom and Rob had been together since the instant he was born, so I disagreed with her for fearing that. Still I admired her immensely for keeping her priorities straight. I went back to my room to go to bed, but I bumped into Emmanuel and Kramer in the hallway. My eyesight was poorer than I thought because I bumped into them because I didn't see him despite the fact that I myself had turned the hallway light on to see where I was going. Either that, or I was just nervous and not focused on where I was going. I smiled despite my nervousness. This was gonna be a long night for me even though I was the one person in the house that didn't have a cup of coffee. “Hi, guys!”

Kramer said, “I've always admired Adam Lambert, but I never cared enough about him to want to contact him directly. Emmanuel tells me you have his fan mail address saved somewhere.”

I asked, “You wanna write him a letter?”

Kramer said, “More than that. I want to send him something he'll remember me by.”

I smiled. “I'm sure he'll never forget you.” I didn't intend to give him false hope with what I was about to say. I meant every word and had the best intentions at heart when I said, “He didn't talk to you more just because he had to go, Kramer, but I don't think he's going to forget you very easily because he liked you.”

Emmanuel said, “Uh, oh,” smiling like a three-year-old, and started to laugh. “Ohhh...”

I said, “I mean it. I think he liked you and he would've talked to you more if he didn't have to rush.”

“True,” Kramer said, blushing and looking down instead of looking me right in the eyes. “He wanted to talk to me more, but he didn't even have time to take a picture with me.” He looked back up at me. “I got too emotional when you guys started talking at random about Pamela Pearson.”

I said, “It's inevitable to lose track of everything when one talks about his or her worst enemy.” Then I smiled again, “But hey, let's focus on the positive things in life again for once, shall we? Tonight is our night. Let's act, just for a few more hours, like Pamela never existed, OK? We won't allow her to poop the party.”

Jessica joined us in the hallway, standing in between Kramer and Emmanuel. “I agree. I think Adam didn't try anything with you because like you said, everyone's hearts broke once again at the mentioning of Pamela Pearson's name. I don't think Adam's life will get back to normal until he sees Katie up and out of that wheelchair. But I couldn't agree more with Vanessa. Kramer, he's attracted to you. Like Vanessa, I doubt he'll be able to forget about you even if years go by before you guys see one another again. You're very attractive, so much so that even knowing you were gay, I always had a crush on you.”

Kramer smiled and put his arm around Jessica. He kissed her on the cheek. “If you weren't a little too young for me, I would've found it cute that you had a crush on me. Girls are beautiful. I never ignore a beautiful girl when she passes me by, but noticing a woman's good looks and being turned on by them are two very-different things, honey. That's like going from here to China.”

Jessica laughed. “I don't blame Adam for reciprocating your feelings for him, man. You're hot.”

“Thank you,” Kramer said, starting to tremble and sweating bullets, “but thinking about him gives me chills up and down my spine. Jeez, I'd never seen him this way before. I always saw him as a phenomenal singer, and nothing more.” He wrapped his arms around himself.

I opened the door to my room. “I'm gonna get you Adam's fan-mail address right now.” I walked back into my room and shut the door behind me. While Jessica, Emmanuel and Kramer chattered in the hallway, I went to my computer desk, opened up my laptop, turned it on, waited for it to start up, and when it did, I put the password in for my Windows-8 user account, and when I was in, I opened Google Chrome in a flash, logged in to Jessica's twitter account because she had trusted me with her password a long time ago, went through her favorite tweets, and scrolled down until I got to a tweet reply that a Glambert she was following but wasn't following her back, had sent her giving her Adam's fan-mail address. I clicked on that tweet to isolate it, and when the tweet opened, I turned my printer back on and pressed a few buttons to print that particular tweet. Luckily for me, what I was printing was not a thread where a long conversation between different people had ensued; but Jessica's tweet asking that popular fan for the address, and the fan replying to her sending her the address. Luckily there wasn't much to be printed because my printer was running out of ink and now, in order to get new ink for their printers, people had to order their print cartridges straight from the official websites of their printers online. When they sold people a printer at their local store, it came with the cartridges brand-new printers always came with at default, and it was up to the printer user to get new ink for it when the printer ran out. I retrieved the printout from the printer tray and walked back out of my room, the sheet of paper in my hand, and handed it to Kramer.

Kramer said, “Perfect. Ooh, the color of her links is cute. I'm gonna go ahead and use that color for my twitter profile. I like it.” He smiled. “Thank you.” He kissed my forehead. “Well, guys, I'm spent. I have to go back home.”

Jessica said, “My parents and I are going to go back home, too. In fact, Mom and Dad sent me here to say goodbye to you guys because they said goodbye to Robert and Katie minutes ago, and I started chatting with you guys instead.” She laughed a little and gave me a hug.

I held her hand for a few seconds. “Take care. I'll talk to you tomorrow afternoon, not in the morning, because I know I'm not gonna be able to get up in the morning.”

Jessica said, “Me neither. Talk to you tomorrow, babe,” and walked away.

Emmanuel took both of my hands in his hands and said, “Damn, I wish I could stay and spend the night with you.”

I gave a mischievous smile. “Meaning?”

“I just want to kiss, hug you and cuddle with you.”

“I do, too, Em.” I gave him a peck on the lips. The thought of being alone with him in my room made me sweat bullets. This wasn't just a crush anymore. I may be a little too young, but this was love.

Emmanuel hugged me. “I might come over later.”

“I'll be waiting.”

Emmanuel walked away from me. I stood in the hallway, my arms crossed across my chest, and heard Emmanuel, the doctors Campbell, Fernando and Miranda say goodbye to Mom and Dad. By now, Fernando's speech was slurred, and he was talking nonsense, though. Knowing she'd have to drive Jess, Fernando and herself home tonight was enough incentive for her not to drink anything alcoholic. I walked to the living room to see Dad and Miranda help Fernando get into his car. Jessica hadn't gotten her driver's license yet. She just had a learner's permit and she didn't know if she was allowed to drive this late because she'd never had to before, due to her curfew. Fernando, Miranda and Jessica went back to their home shortly after, and the doctors Campbell and Emmanuel went back to their home a few minutes after that. 

Dad took Mom in his arms, carried her, accommodated her back into her wheelchair, and Mom drove herself back into her and Dad's room. Dad followed her. I turned off all the lights and walked back into my bedroom to go to sleep, but that was the last thing I did. All I could do was to think about Adam and my family. I still couldn't believe Adam had just performed at my Sweet Sixteen party.

* * *


	18. Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bully that used to torment Vanessa at school when he and she were both little children insinuates himself back into her life by doing the last thing she ever imagined him capable of doing. How will Vanessa fight back? Will she be strong enough?

When Kramer went back to our house a few hours later, at two o'clock in the afternoon, we were making brunch because everyone woke up and got up at the same time. I thought that Kramer had gotten a good night's sleep, but the dark circles under his eyes had my mind wondering exactly what he'd been doing that the last thing he did was to sleep. When he left my home last night, he was so spent that he fell on his face while he walked back to his house. Now, he was just as tired as when he left here. Something was up, but I wondered if Kramer trusted me enough to tell me what had kept him up all night. Maybe he did trust me but he thought I was too young for him to talk to me about it. There was no real harm in asking, though. Kramer and I had never argued about anything in my entire life. He and Emmanuel were the only people in this world I'd never argued with. We'd had difference of opinions, like everybody did when they had a friendship or any other kind of relationship, but with me and Kramer, those had never escalated into arguments. I was also fortunate to say that Emmanuel and I had never insulted or screamed at one another. I couldn't think of our relationship as the perfect one, though, because I'd known about a few couples who were seemingly perfect when they were dating and as soon as they got married, the monsters inside of them came out and attacked the other in full force, and some of said marriages had ended in death. I was too young to know much about romantic relationships anyway. I could've always talked to my parents about this subject, but I didn't want to be disrespectful to either one of them again and I thought that perhaps they'd interpret my asking about romantic relationships disrespectfully, so I digressed.

Kramer and I started talking in the living room while my parents finished making our brunches. 

I asked, “Kramer, what kept you up last night?”

He opened his eyes, looked right at me and smiled. “Should I talk to you about this?”

“It is what I think, isn't it?” I said, smiling back.

He nodded. “Mind if we leave it at that? I mean you're too intelligent for words to be needed. Your imagination goes farther than most people think.” He laughed a bit.

“Yes, it does,” I confessed. “May I ask you a question about men, though?”

“Yes.”

“Kramer, what does one do when the guy one's in love with says that he wishes he could stay and spend the night...I mean, did I misinterpret what Em said to me last night before he left?”

“Well, I'm not about to start a shit storm here. This statement could be interpreted in a few different ways. Maybe he just meant to say that he wishes he could've hung out with you longer.”

I showed him a face so serious that his facial expression also changed dramatically. “What if it's what I think? What should I do?”

He sighed. “It gets better, doesn't it?” He chuckled, not knowing another possible response. “Uh...wow, girl, you just left speechless a man who always has something to say! Let's see. Why don't you just talk to Em about this and tell him you're not ready?”

“How do I know if I am?”

“Kiddo, I think this is something you oughta talk over with your mom. It's difficult for me to go ahead and discuss this with you for various reasons. One, if you were two years older, there'd be no problem, but you just turned sixteen. I'm twenty-one. Secondly, there's no way I could know what that feels like for a girl.”

“Right. Sorry, I'm so nervous I overlooked that.”

“It's OK, and I understand your nervousness, but if this helps, when I realized I was in love with Dustin, I was also very conflicted on whether or not I should—you know, but yes, please talk more about this with Katie. No one can talk to you better about this than your mother. It was harder for me because that I know, I'm the only gay man in my family and no other man in my family that I could look up to was able to give me this kind of advice for obvious reasons. My family was always very supportive of me being gay and living my life like I should, but I had to turn to my gay best friends for advice, because only they knew what it feels like for a man with another man you know, something as beautiful as one's first time.”

“You're absolutely right. I'm gonna talk to my mom, and then I'm gonna talk to Em. I should talk to Mom first.”

Mom came into the living room with a face of concern. “Talk to me about what, honey? Something wrong?”

Kramer said, “Would you like to sit in the couch again, Katie?”

Mom said, taking my hand in hers, “Yes, but I'd like it for my food to be brought here to the living room and set on the coffee table.”

Kramer said, “Right away, Katie. I'll be right back.” Kramer walked out of the living room.

Dad came into the living room. “Vanessa, would you please help me in ordering the hardware of the desktop I'm repairing? Hardware for this year-1999 desktop is hard to find, but of course, it needs to be more advanced, you know? Bigger hard drive, more memory...”

“Sure,” I said. “Is it okay if I talk to Mom about something first?”

Mom turned to look at him.

“Sure, I'm not in a hurry. I just called Corey to tell him that his computer is completely messed up, that it needs all-new hardware, and that I'd take care of ordering the parts and performing the repair, but he trusted me with his credit card to order the hardware online, in Compaq's official website. All I have to do is to install the new hardware and of course the operating system.” Dad handed me a piece of paper with his customer's debit-card information written down. “I want you to obliterate this piece of paper as soon as you use the information written on it to order the computer hardware. I invited Adam over for lunch.”

When I heard Dad calling Dr. Campbell 'Adam' instead of Dr. Campbell, I felt a little queasy, not because I thought of Adam Lambert as soon as he did, as I usually did, but because I thought about the other Adam, who'd been sending me messages on Facebook that I hadn't shown anyone, because I was keeping my Facebook account secret from everyone. There were features that Facebook offered that Twitter didn't, although I preferred Twitter. Still, I had printed out every single message from 'the other Adam'. The things he was writing to me were things that no one would write if they were in their right mind. I was building up courage to go to the police and show them these messages. I stopped thinking about my problem with the other Adam for a minute and said, “Sure, Dad, I'm gonna get right on it. May I do this from your laptop?”

“Yes. It'd be preferable. I just got us back on line because I realized it's necessary for my work, but you know our golden rule, Vanessa: no usage whatsoever of social networking—not yet.”

“I won't forget, Dad,” I said. I was too nervous to talk to my mom right this instant about what Emmanuel said to me last night that shook me to the core, and I felt like I needed a couple of more hours to swallow my fear. I walked out of the living room. Tears stung my eyes when he said this. I was keeping a Facebook account from my parents, and if they found out, they'd distrust me, and this time it would be impossible for me to recuperate their trust, so before they'd find out, I had to do something I didn't want to: deactivating that account. It felt horrible doing something behind my parents' backs all over again just like in my horrid old days, like the secret I was keeping was about me killing someone. The three people that knew about this: Emmanuel, Adam Lambert, and Jessica, thought I was silly in thinking this was that big of a deal, but then again, if I hadn't been through what I went through from ages ten to twelve, I wouldn't see this as a very big deal, either, but my past was haunting me very strong. I went to my dad's office, sat on his chair in front of his computer desk, turned on his laptop, and as soon as it was finished starting up, I went online and ordered all the hardware that Dad's customer needed as it was written down on that list: the motherboard, the RAM, the hard drive, and other hardware, and Dad had included in the list something that I found out online while doing research on this computer, that the computer didn't have when its owner bought it: an internal DVD burner. I bought everything and printed it out when they gave me the confirmation number along with the list of the things I'd just ordered. Like my dad said, I obliterated the piece of paper by crumbling it, putting it in my mouth, chewed on it a little bit just so that no one would be interested in pulling it out of the trash bin, and then I took it in both of my hands and tore it into pieces to make the information that was written on it as undecipherable as I could. Finally, I walked out of my dad's office with my printout in hand. When I saw my dad again in the dining room, eating, Dr. Campbell was sitting across from him. “Hello, Dr. Campbell,” I said, offering him a smile.

“Hello, Vanessa. How are you doing today?”

I said, “Amazing, after the best Sweet-Sixteen party ever.”

He said, “Best Sweet-Sixteen party ever, and it wasn't lavish like all the Sweet Sixteen parties I've been to since Emma and I got married,” laughing. “You're a grateful daughter. Not every parent in the world gets to say that.”

I smiled again. “It's the least I can do after all I put my parents through in the past.”

Dr. Campbell said, “Robert trusted me with that, with your horrible past, and let me tell you that I admire you immensely for seeing the error of your ways at such an early age and turning your life around. Most of the young people that are in that lifestyle usually don't start changing until they hit rock bottom.”

I said, “I was lucky that I didn't hit rock bottom. If I had, I doubt I'd be here today. I just hope that other young people that are walking in the path that I was turn their lives around as well before it's too late.”

Dad asked, “Vanessa, would you please make us some of that great coffee of yours? Your mom told me she wanted coffee and I offered to make it, but she said she wanted you to make it.”

Feeling a sense of accomplishment that I hadn't gotten since I finished the tenth grade with straight A's and one low-average B, I asked, “It was that good, huh?”

Dad said, “You know it.”

I walked away to go to the kitchen and make coffee, but Dr. Campbell stopped me by saying, “Vanessa, Emmanuel asked me for permission to come over later today.”

I said, “It's three o'clock already. When did he say he was planning to come over?”

“He's not gonna be much longer. He's gonna get here around fifteen till five, or five. He has to leave here in time to get enough sleep so he can go back to school for classes tomorrow morning. He has to arrive on campus by eight. Emma and I are thankful that the most prestigious school that was closest to us accepted him. We couldn't have been luckier.”

I replied, “I say this with all due respect. I hear the Campbells are known for getting what they want all the time.”

Dr. Campbell replied, “We do get what we want, almost all the time.” He smiled.

I walked out of the dining room, went to the kitchen, got the coffee maker out of the bottom cabinet, plugged it in, leaving it turned off, put sufficient ground coffee for twelve cups of coffee, added the necessary water, turned it on, and allowed it to make the coffee. While the machine was doing its job, I retrieved the container of coffee creamer from the refrigerator door and set it on the counter. Then I got a couple of teaspoons out of the cabinet drawer and set them right by the coffee maker. I retrieved twelve coffee mugs from the kitchen cabinets as well as the freshly-washed ones in the side of the clean dishes in the kitchen sink. When I finished doing that, my phone alerted me of a new text message. I got my phone out of the pocket of my pants and looked at the new-text alert. The incoming text message was from Emmanuel, and when I clicked to read, there wasn't just one message, but five of them.

The first message said, “I was so tired I didn't explain what I meant to say last night when I made that comment to you about wanting to stay the night.”

The second message said, “and the last thing I wanted to do was to frighten you. Believe me. If I had gotten clues that you were ready for sex, I would've made the proposal to you straight out.”

The third message said, “I don't play mind games with my loved ones. If I had wanted sex then I wouldn't have just said I wanted to stay the night. I would've told you word for word.”

The fourth message said, “I just wanted to talk, at least last night I did. I do want to take it to the next level, but I want you to let me know when you're ready.”

The final message said, “I love you. I'll see you shortly. My dad must've told you already I'm planning to come over.”

I replied saying, “Please come over. We do need to talk about this.”

I thought he was done texting because he was actually on his way here, driving here, and he wasn't accustomed to texting was driving. Emmanuel's cousin, Norbert died in a car crash because he was writing a text message to someone at the moment, and Emmanuel didn't want to be the next to die, so when he was driving, the people that wanted text-message replies from him had to wait until he'd arrive at his destination. However, I received a reply from him saying, “I had a hunch you wanted to discuss what happened last night. That's why I wanted to come over, 'cause I didn't want you to get the wrong ideas about me. That would destroy our relationship. You're my first love and you mean the world to me. I don't want to lose you.”

I wrote back saying, “You won't lose me,” and put the phone back in my pocket while everyone was in the kitchen preparing their cups of coffee to their liking. Luckily for us, we had a kitchen big enough for everyone in the house to be in it at the same time, although my house was anything but a mansion. The rooms in the house had to be ample now because Mom was wheelchair bound. We couldn't afford doorways too narrow or a kitchen she couldn't fit into. The kitchen had always been big, though. It was just Mom and Dad's bathroom that needed to be rebuilt. I went back to the living room. My coffee mug was still sitting by the coffeemaker empty after everyone made their cups of coffee and gathered in the dining room to continue chattering. Mom had Rob in her arms right now, and Rob seemed entertained looking around him at everybody. People were talking to him and smiling at him and he was smiling back, with his little hand in his mouth, while they couldn't stop flailing over his cuteness, calling him an angel.

I went back to my room, took a quick shower, changed my clothes, blow-dried and combed my hair. When I was done, someone knocked on the door. I walked over to the door and opened it. It was Jessica. I had to see her in order to tell this time because her way of knocking was different this time. Her eyes were reddened, looking bloodshot almost. Without saying a word to me, she just wrapped me in her arms and started sobbing on my shoulder. I hugged her back tight and closed the door behind her, crying with her. We sat together at the foot of my bed.

Sniffling, she said, “I knew he was mean as hell, but I never expected him to be this disgusting!”

“Who are you talking about, Jess?” I said, alarmed, feeling my heart pounding. “What happened?”

“That bozo you used to loathe that you ran into at Burger King that day, remember him?”

“Adam?”

“Yes!”

“What did he do to you?”

“He raped me!” she screamed over and over. “He raped me! He raped me!”

I hugged her tighter than before, feeling the most intense headache coming on and like I was about to have a damned heart attack.

* * *


End file.
